But just in case Canberrans needed reminding, the green ogre himself was on hand at the National Museum of Australia on Wednesday for the launch of ticket sales for the next blockbuster exhibition.

DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition, which opens at the museum on September 12, is an exploration of more than 20 years of animation. Using the studio's most popular films - including Shrek, Madagascar, and How to Train Your Dragon - the exhibition will delve into the elements of making animations, including character, story and setting.

"This is done through more than 400 items that have been drawn from the DreamWorks archives, which is huge," National Museum curator Kate Morschel says.

"This is material that you never often get a look at so it features concept drawings - so you can see how they evolved and changed - and storyboards - which are an essential part of the animation process.

"There are scale models which are just stunning and are a really important way for designers and animators understand how these creatures move in the real world and [how they] look. It really shows what a collaborative and involved process it is."

The exhibition, which was originally developed by the Australian Centre of Moving Image (ACMI) and DreamWorks Animation in 2014, aims to shed light on how much work and collaboration goes into these films.

It highlights the technology and how it has developed over the decades, but also sheds light on the elements of the process that are still the same as traditional animation.

"The polishing, the colour, the movement and things like that; so much traditional animation techniques are used in the development of these stories," Ms Morschel says.

"But I've gone back and revisited some of these films that I watched many years ago and just seeing how the characters have changed in the details, the things that technology has enabled animators [for example] to render the water quality in How to Train Your Dragon just compared with the first one through to the third is incredible."

While the exhibition sheds light on how the "magic" happens, Ms Morschel says it only adds to the viewing experience.

"Even getting that insight into things like special effects, and particularly lighting and the rendering of water, which is so challenging in animation," she says.

"But even knowing that technical process, I feel like it makes the films that much more magical. We always talk about magic in animation and this is it being unravelled and shown in front of you, but it doesn't detract from that. You still have that joy and that wonder.

"But the exhibition covers their first films - so Antz and the biblical epic The Prince of Egypt - and those were both launched in 1998 and it takes you through to some of their most recent films like Trolls. And I think DreamWorks as a studio is one that has always challenged that view that animation is only for children."

Tickets are now available for the exhibition from nma.gov.au.