Empowered by the Powermac Animation Camp

My little ball of pure energy wanted to try something new this summer. Boldly coming out of his ultra physical swim camp and football camp comfort zones, Kenji has asked me to get him into Powermac's Animation Summer Workshop. Did a feel a bit daunted? Of course, I did. Animation would mean he'd be on his seat for 2 hours a day. And Kenji does not do on-his-seat-for-2-hours-a-day too well.

Well, leave it up to Powermac to prove me wrong!

Powermac's 3-day Workshops covered Programming, Digital Design, Music, and even Junior IT Training. Tools the new generation can definitely use and enjoy. The Animation Workshop gave kids complete hands-on creation with 3 of their top animation programs: Toon Boom, Pencil, and Flash. Each session meant your kid comes home with a freshly made animation which he made all by himself. Insta-Fulfilment For-The-Win!

The set-up was pretty serious, office-like, which made me worry at first.

But with their own top-of-the-line laptops…

User-friendly yet fantabulous programs…

And über helpful teachers…

The whole three days were just as fun as they were enriching.

Check out a couple of first-time animator's stuff from my boy. :)

Graduation Day came with a snazzy certificate.

And this even snazzier wooden flash drive filled with the collection of your kids' works.

Make sure to keep up to speed with Powermac's remaining summer workshops and other future kiddie activities. I mean, we will.

Art to Art

I haven't been talking about Family Project Weekend for a long time now simply because my boys have not moved on since being introduced to Papier Mache.  Papier Mache, by far, is the longest-running hobby hit in the household!  That and tinkering with the mac.  My boys are umbilically-connected to technology being self-professed mini-art directors.

This post features those 2 loves.

One rainy weekend, Kenji was surprisingly hell-bent on making papier maches of Maggie Octopus (from the Simpson's Halloween Movie) and Dr. Octagonapus (of YouTube's fame).  I thought those were pretty random choices until he shot a picture of the 2 facing each other and quickly uploaded it to the mac.  He then went to work on the Powerpoint Program and transformed the simple shot into a screen capture of his self-made, work-in-progress video game:  OCTOWARS!

And then there's Miro who slaved for days sculpting, coating, and painting several penguin breeds he learned from the school library.  When done, he propped them on a white sheet, took dozens of photos, and uploaded them to the mac.  I saw him surfing for different scenic backgrounds, too.  A little computerized snip, paste, and clean up later --and he's got the first few pages of his new book:  THE TRAVELING PENGUIN.

My boys are multimedia (er, dualmedia) artists!  Who would've guessed! 

I'm proud of my boys for welding the 2 art forms together to create cohesive, imaginative wholes.  Their fondness for old art and new art finally met.  Of course, they haven't finished their big projects and are now bullying me to help them out --but it's a cool start.

With that, I call upon parents all over to expose your kids to every art form they can get their hands on.  Kids are pretty poly-inventive.  Chances are, they'll astound you.