Day 144: Boston (Museum of Science)

It's really cold today, -11~-1 Celsius degree, so I finally used the scarf Amanda gave me. 

今天很冷，負11~負1度，所以我終於拿出Amanda給我的圍巾來用。

I went to Museum of Science, Boston today, and to my surprise, there's a Pixar exhibition going on right now!!!

今天去了波士頓科博館，讓我驚喜的是，現在剛好有皮克斯展！！！

The exhibition is called Science behind Pixar. Being an enthusiastic moviegoer and having a sister who's a fan of Mike Wazowski, even if I have to pay five more dollars even having a membership card, I HAVE to go, no kidding.

展覽名為《皮克斯背後的科學》(翻得超爛，我在幹嘛XD)。做為一個電影愛好者，又有一個愛大眼仔的妹妹，就算即使拿會員卡也要在多付五塊錢，我還是必須去看阿，開什麼玩笑。

It tells us how the pipeline works in Pixar, and besides explanation, there're a lot of clips of challenges Pixar faced when making some of the popular animations and people talking about their experiences working in Pixar. Also, there're a lot of interactive activities to participate or workstations with software that's been used in Pixar for people to  experience the specific process on the pipeline. The first is modeling. After the idea is turned into a story, and the story has been turned into story boards, sculptors will make models of the lead characters so that other departments have better idea of how the characters should be like.               展覽告訴我們皮克斯生產線怎麼運作的，而且除了解說，還有很多皮克斯在製作這些知名動畫電影時遇到的挑戰以及皮克斯的員工談論他們的工作經驗的影片。另外，也有很多配備有皮克斯使用的軟體的工作站讓參觀者可以體驗生產線的製作過程。第一步是「造型」。在想法被轉成故事，故事也已經畫成分鏡表之後，雕刻家們就會把主要角色們的模型做出來，這樣其他部門對角色應該長怎樣有更好的概念。

Second, rigging. It's an important step to make the characters more believable and more human-like, but since many of them are not HUMAN, it's not necessary that they have the same joints as we do. For example, Mrs. Incredible can stretch her body like Mr. Fantastic, so sometimes she doesn't have rigging at all, and Mike Wazowski has no torso, so he only has rigging of hands and legs. 第二步，骨架。這是讓角色可信度更高也更像人類的一個重要步驟，但是因為很多角色根本「不是人」，所以他們也不必要跟我們擁有完全一樣的關節。舉例來說，超能太太的身體跟驚奇先生一樣可以無限延展，所以有時候她完全沒有骨架。而大眼仔因為沒有身體，所以他的骨架只有手與腳。

Third step is to create surfaces, and the main example given is Cars. This is the car hood I made at this workstation. It's not clear, but it's rusty just like Mater in Cars.

第三步是製造出各種不同的表面，主要的例子是【汽車總動員】。照片裡是我在這個工作站做的引擎蓋，不是很清楚，但是它跟【汽車總動員】裡的拖線一樣生鏽了。

Fourth step is Sets & Cameras, the main example is A Bug's Life. I didn't take a picture of this section because what would be in the picture is merely grass, haha. The workstation here let you build your own prairie by deciding the color, density, length and some other variables on the software.

第四步是場景與攝影機，主要的例子是【蟲蟲危機】。我沒有拍這區因為拍起來只會有一堆草而已XD 這區的工作站讓你用軟體，透過調整顏色、密度、長度以及其他變數，來製作自己的草皮。

Fifth step is an important session telling us that even though the advent of computer changed how we make animation a lot, it's just the way processing it is different. Instead of asking animators to draw every frame manually themselves, now we can ask computers to do it, but animators still have to be the actors and actresses and determine how the characters are going to move between the start position and final position.
第五步是繪製(或是我覺得也可以翻成賦予生氣的步驟)。這是一個告訴我們「即使電腦大幅改變動畫產製，其實也只是製造方法改變而已」的重要區塊。與其叫動畫師們自己徒手畫每一影格，現在我們可以叫電腦做了，但是動畫師們還是必須成為演員，決定角色們要如何從起始動作改變到最後的動作。

Sixth step is Simulation. This is the hardest one to me, and it made me realize that it requires a lot of engineers to work in Pixar. In this step, things like fire, fur, hair, water, etc. will be turned into more realistic stage. There's a video showing simulation department engineers figure out how human curly hair bounces, create a string to simulate it and write a program to make Merida's hair look real.第六步是模擬。這是對我來說最難的一個步驟，也是這裡讓我體會到皮克斯要有多少工程師。在這個步驟，火、毛、頭髮、水這類的東西都會被變得更真實。有一支影片告訴你模擬部門的工程師怎麼搞懂人類捲髮的彈跳、做了一個彈簧然後寫出一個程式來讓【勇敢傳說】梅莉達的頭髮看起來像真的。

Next step is lighting. Not until I experienced some tasks here that I realized I find it interesting to do lighting in an animation crew and I'm pretty talented. Maybe it's related to my interest in optics. This is the lighting I made for Dory. It's a still picture, but actually there's moving lights due to the sea wave. I set it as a normal situation when Dory swims to somewhere very close to the surface, so the color was dark blue, and the light shades were light and moved fast. It's really interesting that if you switch the color to red, green or purple, you feel that it's a dangerous water, and that's the magic of lighting.下個步驟是燈光。直到我在這裡試了一些挑戰我才發現做動畫燈光很好玩，而且我還滿有天分的。搞不好真跟我對光學的興趣有關。這是我為多莉打的光。照片是靜態的，但因為海流其實有移動的光源。我設定為普通的情況下多莉游到很接近海面的地方，所以顏色是深藍，光影很亮又移動很快。把顏色調成紅、綠或紫感覺就像危險水域真的很好玩，這就是燈光的魔力。

The last step is Rendering which is to combine all the aforementioned effort together, and it's the most time-consuming process during the whole production. For example, every frame in Inside Out cost 29 hours to render...

最後一步是彩現，也就是把前面步驟的成果組合起來，這也是整個製作過程中最耗時間的步驟。舉例來說，【腦筋急轉彎】每一影格都要29個小時才能彩現完成...

Of course I still saw a lot of stuff in the museum, and I did learn some scientific concepts that I didn't know before, but this Pixar exhibition is definitely my best fruit today. Guess what, I bought a Mike Wazowski T-shirt for Amanda!!!

當然我也看了博物館很多東西，也學到一些我之前不知道的科學概念，但是皮克斯展絕對是我今天最棒的收穫了。而且猜怎麼樣，我買了一件大眼仔的T恤給Amanda!!!