The Science of Cartoons Coming to Imagination Station

Get ready, parents; It's going to be a lot harder to win the battle of ‘cartoons versus homework.' With Imagination Station's new animation exhibit, the kids will actually learn something (whether they know it or not).

Animation features all your favorite Cartoon Network characters as they walk you and your children through the process of converting simple drawings to larger-than-life creations.

"I don't think people necessarily think of cartoons as a science, but when they realize it actually takes science to put those things together, maybe they'll realize it isn't just beakers and test tubes. There's science in everything, and this is just really showing how it fits into something as simple as cartoons," said Anna Kolin, communications and public relations manager for Imagination Station. Anna explained cartoons are much more complicated than just drawing characters and shapes. Animators must use skills like geometry and math to plot out where and how their characters will move within their environments. For instance, it takes 24 frames to make one second of animation, so an animator must calculate how many frames he or she needs to accomplish each scene or action. And so everything makes sense when we watch it, they apply their knowledge of the human brain's sense of perception and reasoning.

Once inside the exhibit, you and your child can find out from beginning to end what it takes to put a cartoon together. In the animation studio, you'll explore story creation, create your own story board and create scenes with cels and moving backgrounds. Then, a series of cameras positioned around a room allow you to take a 360-degree picture of yourself, teaching how movement is used in drawings. One of the traveling exhibit's most popular facets allows you to be the voice behind some of your most favorite cartoons. Inside the sound stage, you'll learn how important sound can be while trying to match up phrases to the character's different mouth shapes, or even how silly music can make a scary scene not so scary.

Aside from your kid's favorite Cartoon Network characters, there'll be something for the ‘old school' cartoon fans in the Cartoon Museum. There, visitors can take a look at clips from popular cartoons, as well as stroll along corridors stocked with some of the same sketches and models used to create some of today's most iconic Hanna Barbara cartoons.

"They can really go back to when they were kids," said Anna. "You can really see how things have progressed over the years. Kids now, yeah, they know who Scooby-Doo is but they have no idea who The Jetsons are, and it's an opportunity to show their kids and say ‘This is what I grew up with.' Cartoons now are different, but the processes are the same and it crosses generations and makes parents feel like kids again."