Ana Victoria Morales

21/02/14

Museums and exhibitions report

Musee Art Ludique Pixar, 25 years of animation

This exhibition fascinated me because I want to study and work later in animation of
cartoons and family friendly entertainment. The artwork shown here was absolutely
amazing, especially since Disney is the leading animation studio in the entire world. We
were shown step by step how is the process before an animated movie is actually made.
Numerous sketches of characters from all the recent Disney Pixar films, 3D grids of the
characters showing the structure and building of these.
The main attracting point to me was the fact that for each movie you had an entire area
dedicated to character design, many sketches, colour tryouts, figurines and clay models
to study the 3 dimensions of the characters, different clothes, different face expressions.

What I liked the most was the background and story boarding. The artists have to
explore with colours and shapes and traditional mixed media, like gouache,
watercolours, acrylics, pastels, charcoal.
The story boarding is really interesting because we get to see the early stages of the
story, how the writers change the story 100 times before they get to what we actually
see in the film, how rough and simple the story boards are, how they animate them for
the voice actors to have an example while theyre recording.


To me this exhibition was simply breathtaking because the art behind Disney films is so
beautiful and so interesting to see in all its stages before the movie is made.




The Museum of letters Love letters


This exhibition interested me because since February is the month of love I thought it
was very appropriate. The museum has about 500 old letters and manuscripts as back
as the 12
th
century, including Einsteins rough notes about his theory of relativity.
The love letters were writings, poems, notes, letters of famous writers, singers, men and
women who changed history, country leaders and intellectual thinkers.
It was very interesting, maybe not to read, but to know that such people wrote things
like this.

There were Love letters from Ovid, which are some of the oldest poems known to
people, secret love letters from the Tzar Alexander IIs mistress saying the idea of this
new separation oppresses me like a terrible nightmare. There were words by the
famous French poet Charles Baudelaire about his mistress show that inspiration for his
poems came sometimes from her. It was very interesting to read about the love affairs
these iconic people had.

Letters between Jean Cocteau and actor Jean Marais, missing each other, saying that the
postman will not have letters for him for 2 days.
Famous names like Juliette Drouet, Victor Hugo, Napoleon, Zola, Piaf were shown
pouring the hearts out on paper for their lovers. Also Hemingway who sent letters of
wishing for a better future and promises to his wife Mary Welsh while he was on a
transatlantic ship to America.
It was very interesting to read all these famous names writing love and secret letters to
their partners because its something very private that no one really knows about.





The Moof Museum (Museum of original figurines)

The Moof museum is a very small museum showing a private collection of figurines of
many comic strip characters. This museum is dedicated to the 9
th
Art and it shows also
original comic strips, character design and drawings. The dcor inside was designed by
young artists and Belgian art students, which I thought was a nice touch.

In the museum you find figurines of every size, from miniature to life size of many comic
strips and cartoons, especially Belgian ones such as Asterix, The Smurfs, Tintin, Lucky
Luke, Gaston, Spirou and Fantasio, etc. However there were also a few French and
American like Spiderman and Batman.

There were many drawings and history of how the cartoons were made, the
representations with the figurines was impressive, especially for The Smurfs because
their world is so little that it looked very realistic. There were also a few little films one
could watch throughout the way along with many texts next to the drawings and
figurines explaining the process etc.
I thought it was a brilliant little exposition, for people who are passionate about this art,
and the process of making cartoons and films and anything that happens before that
this is perfect. I am very interested in this art and to see the making of such old historic
cartoons is very interesting because its a method that is no longer used in todays
cartoons and it has a very distinct visual effect on the screen. I personally didnt grow
up with most of these cartoons but I know them nonetheless and I really liked the way it
was presented.







The Belgian Comic Strip Center

Firstly what I found most interesting was the fact that the building the museum is in
was designed by Victor Hugo in a beautiful Art Nouveau style.
The museum shows a collection of prints and drafts from different Belgian cartoonists.
The museum showed many cartoons that only Belgian people or people from the area
would know, so for tourists it was not that much interesting. However the museum still
shows the history of the comic strip in Belgium and many of its most known cartoon
artists.

I didnt know many of the cartoons and the ones I knew had a very small section such as
Tintin.
The museum itself is very sober in contrast to The Moof museum which the dcor inside
is very cartoonish, very alive with characters and drawings on the walls.
The most attractive aspect was the extensive library with a great selection of comic
books one could grab and read. There were a few temporary exhibits: Will Eisner, from
Spirit to the graphic novel and The Swiss comic strip in Brussels, which were interesting
in the sense that I didnt know the artists however it stays as the rest of the museum,
not very interactive thus becoming a little dull and repetitive by the end.
I didnt enjoy the museum as much, because of the fact that it was very sober.





The Herg Museum

This museum is all dedicated to Herg, which is the cartoon artist who created Tintin.
This museum is absolutely enormous and the amount of artwork and history in there is
outstanding.
We are taken through the life journey of Herg to where he began designing Tintin,
there are over 1000 works of Tintin including original plates, photographs, documents,
objects and anything related to the comic strip and Herg himself.

The museum has an audio guide which explains every process, every story, every
technique and anything there is to know about how Herg made Tintin happen. There
were many sketches and manuscripts of the stories, sketches of the comic strips, final
designs that were sent to production, objects that inspired Herg to make some things
in the comic strip. There were recreations of costumes he used for his characters, the
model dog he used for Milou.
There was also quite a bit of traditional artwork dedicated to Tintin, background
designs, character drawings and scenes of the comic strip.

In a part of the museum they focus more on Herg himself, his background and family,
his studio, his life as a whole before and after Tintin, explaining that he not only created
Tintin but he was also a great illustrator, graphic artist, caricaturist, cartoonist and story
teller.