As promised, after seeing the robot exhibit in January, I came back to the museum for The Science Behind Pixar. If you go in the afternoon it’s less crowded, because the school field trips are finishing up, and, after all, your competition to get into the exhibit is children of a lesser age.

Each of the nine elements of the Pixar Production Pipeline – story and art, modeling, rigging, surfaces, sets and cameras, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering – has its own section where you can play at the process and hear from people at Pixar who do the jobs associated with that specialty. I now want to be one of them, although I have absolutely no knowledge in any of the areas.

The company says it employs between 500 and 1000 people. That’s a little vague considering their technical expertise. Perhaps job security, except at the top of the food chain, isn’t so great. But, given that I’m already retired, that’s not a deterrent.

Their website lists, as qualifications for an internship, “enrollment in an undergraduate or graduate program, or have graduated within one year from start of internship” That might be a problem. But what if I went back to school?

The element of rendering holds some promise. In computing it’s defined as “the processing of an outline image using color and shading to make it appear solid and three-dimensional.” Apparently I’ve been rendering my personality for years, without the aid of a computer.

And there’s a current opening for Vice President, Renderman. It’s always been my understanding that vice presidents don’t have to know or do much.

While at the museum I also went through the mirror maze in the Numbers in Nature exhibit. It’s also advantageous to see this exhibit in the afternoon, as a day’s worth of fingerprints on the mirrors helps you navigate, and, if you get lost, staff probably will rescue you before closing time.