Animationland

The Big Idea

I can create animation to tell my stories.

The Approach

A wacky, cartoony house facade with two doorways - one for the kids only - greets Animationland visitors and brings them right into an animation studio complete with work tables, sketches, and inspiration everywhere! Visitors are invited to experiment at light tables by tracing and sketching Animationland characters and creating anything they can dream up.

They’ll become oriented to the world of storytelling through animation while learning about how animation works, the basics of the animation process, and getting to know our playful, easy-to-draw Animationland mascots.

After spending time in the studio and gaining foundational knowledge about how animation works, visitors venture out into a fantastical land – a lot like our natural world, but more magical! – where the funny, endearing characters they drew in the studio come to life through exhibit graphics and original animated shorts.

Thematic Areas

Tracey's Studio: Visitors are introduced to basic concepts of animation like character construction, storyboarding, and frame rates through structured interactives and free-form creative play with sketching materials and light tables.

Comfort Peaks: A gallery of short clips—by children from OMSI camps and classes as well as professional animators—provides an inspirational setting for stations stocked with fun props that visitors use to create their own stop-motion animation.

Prickle Desert: Mechanical and electronic interactives explore how the illusion of motion is created in animation.

Blub-Glub Village: Visitors become the stars of their own stop motion animation clip in an iconic full-body experience, creating video in which they appear to float or teleport.

Forgotten Forest: A Foley Room provides diverse and surprising noisemaking objects to add sound effects to an animated clip while a Vocal Studio lets visitors record themselves to give voice to the animated characters.