This exhibition wasn’t initially in my schedule. Well, durian fell down from the sky, my generous lecturer had given me a ticket. I might as well just go and bring back some stories for Rainee.

In case you do not know the artist, Jimmy Liao is one of the top selling Taiwanese picture book artist, produced many famous book namely <Turn left, turn right> and other titles which I doesn’t know the English title :p

This exhibition revolved around his work “The Starry Starry Night”, which tells a story of how an unhappy girl meets and silent boy. The exhibition showcased many of Jimmy’s original artworks complimented by various installations to complement the story. I was very much astonished looking at the detailed illustration pieces.

The exhibition venue : Huashan1914.Creative Park:

Ground floor:

First floor:

Second floor:

Third floor:

more info at http://starrynight.jimmyspa.com/

My class had made a study trip to 2009 Taiwan Design Expo at Taichung 8^th OCT 2009. It is a flagship event in Taiwan design industry (*note: through my observation, the word Design in Taiwan normally skewed towards industrial design).

This year, the expo took place in Taichung Creative And Cultural Park, which was the Fifth Winery of Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau. This 6.4 acres land was then handed over to the Council of Cultural Affairs and then developed into a creative and cultural park for public.

The theme of the design expo for this year is “Essence”. There are eleven pavilions and a marketplace packed with fresh creative ideas from Taiwan, Japan, the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, and France, enabling visitors to explore the essence of design from different perspectives and experience boundless touches of design.

more info at http://designexpo.boco.com.tw/en/

1^st OCT 2009 was the launching ceremony day of the first exhibition by Jia Xiang, Lee (my interactive art lecturer) titled “Multi-Constrains”. Through polygons, Lee is trying to establish the relationship between points, edges and surfaces, which reflects how things are being produced out of multi-constrains.

more info at http://www.dac.tw/multi_contrains/

Together with the above event, ‘ANIMA’ animation festival was launched at the same time. The festival showcased. There are three primary themes in this exhibition, namely the short film by Taiwanese New Talents; graduation films from 2008 French digital animation school SUPINFOCOM; and the compilation of fine works by the Parisian animation school GOBELINS from 2003 to 2009.

following are some interesting animation shown:

Full animation list and event info at http://www.dac.tw/anima/foreword.html

Taipei Fine Art Museum is holding one of the most wanted exhibition this summer, “PIXAR : 20 Years of Animation” from 7^th AUG 09 to 1^st NOV 09. The exhibition is organized together with Environmental Art Centre and Barbican International Enterprise which in charge of PIXAR tour. The expo is exhibiting approximately 650 drawings, sketches, digital printing, 50 over sculptures, as well as video installations and classic short films.

The exhibition is divided into 12 sections:

1, Pixar History
As per the title, year what date what happened what…

2, Characters
I think this is the most valuable section, as most of the hand drawn sketches and sculptures are exhibited in this area.

3,Story
Showcase of story boards, color scripts and animatics.

4, World
lots of world/background design and matte painting

5, Special Feature
‘Ratatouille’, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Up’ are the featured work where the creative process is demonstrated.

6, The Art of Pixar’s Short Films
5 highly representative short animation (those shown before the movie) are presented along with creative process materials.

7, Zoetrope
This is the best part! It spins, it spins faster, it spins even faster…  and magic happens when the lights start to blinks.

8, Meet the Artist
Interviews(videos) of the artists and crew.

9, Artscape
An animation presented with 4 joint projections, leading audience from one scene to another, going through the world of animations that PIXAR produced these years.

I went to the exhibition on a Thursday afternoon, but still it was packed like canned sardine. People were walking along the walls in like tortoise. I regretted from the moment I stepped inside looking at the crowd. Another weird thing I experienced was the tour guide headset I rented. The idea is like this, you put the headset on, whenever you see a little number next to the art work, punch the number in, Sulley and Mike (Monster Inc) will give you and audio introduction about the section. The problem is, this is Taiwan, Sulley and Mike speak Mandarin and only Mandarin, hahahahaha. It feels very awkward and I decided to turn it off.

Overall, I think the exhibition is quite worth it, especially for those who are not familiar with animation production. It give a brief idea on the creative process, character design, world design, script writing, storyboarding and so on. And the hand drawn sketches and detailed sculptures are splendid.

The best moment is when the audience “Wow” together spontaneously when Zoetrope’s lights started to blink.

Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed to take photos.

For more pics & info, visit online.tfam.museum/pixar/ and pixar20.blogspot.com .