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[13:42] Hittin' the Mueseums
Due to DR testing at work this weekend, I've had quite a holiday. We decided to try and work through some of the items on the "Things To Do In London Before We Go" list. Because we're currently based in the "Gateway to the South" it takes a little longer to get back into town, about 30 minutes on the Northern line (assuming that the bastards running).
Yesterday we went to the Science Museum which was both interesting and sadly neglected. I liked the idea behind the place - making science "hands on" and relevant with lots of new exhibits but sadly a lot of the exhibits suffered from pretty obvious neglect. I was pretty impressed with the Boeing 7x7 wheel assembly that's right inside the front door, I've always wanted to get close to one of those but there was a section inside on the second floor called "Communications". This would have been interesting if I hadn't had to break out my torch to read half of the information panels due to the lights (both overhead and inside the display cabinets) being out. One of the monitors mounted on the wall showing various little spiels was broken and had so much dust on its screen that someone had managed to write "clean me" in the dust.
There was also another exhibition being hosted by the Museum, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. This cost an extra £10 to get in but I thought it was worth it. Amongst various working drafts and character references they had on display a collection of storyboards for all of the movies. The concept behind them being to describe the major emotions felt during each segment of the movie. Each movie was covered by two to three A3 sized canvases that were most spectacular, although stylised, you could follow the whole movie really obviously and easily! The other static highlight was some of the art that had been done to get familiar with the medium they were trying to portray, some of the light studies from Finding Nemo were fantastic. There was also a Rotoscope style exhibit, except in reverse. Instead of a whole lot of stuff inside a cylinder they put everything on a plate and strobed the lights instead. It consisted of a wheel (about 1 meter in diameter) that had a whole lot of Toy Story characters in various positions (bouncing on a ball, parachuting from a toy bin, lassoing themseleves, etc. Finally there was a short film that featured all of the static items from the exhibition and made an end to end animation of them all. If you're a Pixar fan then it's well worth the entry fee!
Sunday brought the Natural History Museum. Since all of the museums over here are (generally) free, I don't mind paying the extra entry fee to the value-adding exhibits, besides it was only £6! There were some pretty awesome photos involved (as you'd expect) and on the way out there was a "film" that displayed the previous years winners as well. Luckily I'm not a photographer or I might have been quite discouraged by the amount of winning and runner-up photos submitted by folks in the 10-14 year age bracket!
On the way out we checked out the lower floor of the museum, covering mammals. There are a lot of stuffed animals, circa 1960-something I suspect. Most of them are fading quite badly and there are notices all over the place noting that they are aware of the fact but that it's not considered polite to go around killing things so you can stuff them in a glass box to look at - very progressive!
[Posted at 09/04/2006 21:42]