Exhibition on Barcelona's Hollywood animation studio opens with 300 objects

Working with the most famous directors worldwide from a small studio in Barcelona's Rambla de Badal boulevard. Grangel Studio has been designing some of the most characteristic animation movie characters, and now all are featured at the largest exhibition ever presented on the animation team.

'Creating cinema characters' at Barcelona's Casa Seat recovers Grangel Studio's 40-year trajectory. "We are still alive; we have not stepped down," Carlos Grangel said during the exhibit's presentation on Tuesday.

The show features characters from famous movies, such as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Alex the lion from Madagascar, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, and Spirit.

Divided into two floors, the exposition featuring 300 objects starts with characters designed for 'stop motion' movies, such as Del Toro's Pinocchio and Burton's Corpse Bride. Del Toro's movie won the 2023 Oscars for Best Animated Feature Film with the designs of Pinocchio and Geppetto by Carlos and his brother Jordi.

After the main area featuring several 3D models of Corpse Bride, there are drawings and 'confidential' scripts of other movies, such as Madagascar and Shark Tale, and some more modern creative projects, such as FC Barcelona's mascot CAT.

"It is a celebration of work during the last 40 years," Carlos said, explaining that they had never before done an exposition this big in the Catalan capital. Some pieces had already been exhibited at the MoMA Museum in New York City, US, or other museums. "A lot of archives and plenty of material shared by studios in Hollywood," Carlos added.

The studio has worked on 32 different movies, and there are three still in development. As the "maximum capacity" the studio has is two large productions annually.

The free-access exposition is open from Wednesday until September 4.

Their studio is full of colored pens, pencils, markers, papers, and materials enjoying their space beside dolls, paintings and sketches, and even prizes, including a Catalan Cinema Academy Gaudí Award.

The creative process takes place in three different rooms, all of which display traces of past and current works hanging on the walls.

Press play below to listen to our Filling the Sink podcast episode on the award-winning animation studio, Grangel Studio, published in 2023.