National Museum of Australia

Soymilk Studio played a key role in bringing that space to life by creating a series of five short story animations and an atmospheric animation, all featuring iconic Australian animals. Elements from these productions, in the form of illustrations were also used in the gallery space and within other promotional purposes either as printed or digital assets.

We worked on these stories in partnership with the Museum and in consultation with Traditional Owners and artists. We also collaborated with Arterial who beautifully designed the space. The play space focuses on storytelling using current childhood education theory. Visitors participate in play experiences that connect to stories from the museum's collection and are designed for multiple generations to enjoy together. With the use of animations viewed through portholes, visitors are transported into six different stories featuring Australian animals or mythical creatures. These stories are brought to life through interactive play that allows children to physically interact and empathise with the characters.

Here below is an overview of the Discovery Centre. (video produced by SilverSun Pictures)

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The Museum chose us specifically for our mixed media style and storytelling sense that is a perfect fit for the multi sensory experience of the Discovery Centre. We wanted the young visitors to feel like they can reach into the screen and physically touch the various characters. This is something that we achieved by using real materials and practical sets combined with appealing illustrations.

This meant a lot of our time was spent on building out many of the props needed for the stories. A good example of that is the 18th century ship, the HMS Investigator inspired by Matthew Flinders circumnavigation of Australia. We researched the original designs and existing models of the ship and built our own simplified kid-friendly version that was used for the Trim the cat animation.

One big challenge of this project was to create a consistent visual style and art direction that could be shared across the 5 different stories, we achieved this by our use of textures, colours and shape language that was found in both our character and background designs. To achieve this look we used every tool at our disposal and mixed many techniques together to create stories that will resonate with young and not so young audiences for many years to come.

You can discover the Tim and Gina Fairfax Discovery Centre which is open daily at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.