Gov School 2013 and Demibooks Composer Studio

MacLab in Schewel Hall at Lynchburg College waiting for Gov School students to arrive.

Sunday the students arrived for the 2013 Summer Residential Governor's School Program in Mathematics, Science, and Technology; or Gov School. This is the eighteeth year it has been hosted by Lynchburg College and my 5th year of teaching 2D animation and interactive design with Adobe Flash Professional. This year things are going to be quite different. Gov School students come from all over Virginia and live on campus for 4 weeks. Every year it has been a pleasure to work with a group of students, most rising seniors, who want to spend the month of July studying and working when they could be at the beach.  Well,maybe...

Brand new iMacs in the lab

One reason my course will be different this year is because Lynchburg College received a grant from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges for technology to support creativity in the arts. I am thrilled that this grant made possible the purchase of 30 iPads and 3 iPad kiosks among other things. These iPads will be available for my Gov School students. I will have the opportunity to share with my students my enthusiasm for Demibooks Composer Studio, the production software I am using to develop my artEpants series of apps for young children.

Demibooks has created products that are affordable and versatile yet relatively easy to use to create apps with realistic physics, animation, illustrations, text, sound, movies and visual effects. I started working with their Composer Pro but upgraded to the subscription Composer Studio when it was released. I have had a great time learning the software and watching my content flex and grow into the capabilities of Composer Studio.

iPads sync'd and charged

The addition of Composer Share has significantly altered the Demibooks landscape. This free app lets me share my app at any stage of development with any one I choose. Right now I am preparing for a second round a beta testing for artEpants's Duck Takes A Ride. A bit of a learning curve to understand how I explain to my testers how to access the the dcb (Demibooks file format). I got up to speed on that problem and ready to shoot it out again when another complication became apparent.  The complication that will delay this process is that Composer Share is not completely compatible with the latest features of Composer Studio. The most important of which is Hot Zones. This funcionality greatly enhances the options for interactivity. I am going to have to wait for the upgrade to proceed with my beta testing.

Hopefully during the month of July this problem will be addressed so that no matter how far along the students get in the process of working with Composer Studio, they will have something when they leave that they can take back home and share with their family and friends. They can always save their Demibooks files and get Composer Studio for an iPad at home.

There was some consternation from IT staff about loading Composer Studio because it is currently not available through the iTunes store. Actually I have yet to load all 30 versions, but we won't be working with Composer immediately after the students arrive, so I have some time. What my colleagues in IT didn't understand is how impressed I am with the ease of use and scope of this software and how motivated I am to use it with students. The Demibooks community support has been really wonderful.  

We will start Gov School working in Flash CS6. This gives me an opportunity to introduce all of the students to the basic principles of animation and help them develop skills in content creation, both illustration and animation. Those skills will be useful when we start working on the iPads and need content to import into Composer Studio.

It's Tuesday afternoon and we have completed two days of classes and I am very impressed with how diligently the students are working and how quickly they are grasping the basic concepts and maneuveuring around in Flash. Numerous student came to Gov School with both Flash and animation experience, but quite a few created their first animation today. I still remember seeing the first animation I made years ago.  

iPads locked up in a fancy cart that charges and syncs.

I will keep you posted on our progress.

My remarks to the students and parents on Sunday afternoon after the Opening Ceremonies when we all gathered in the MacLab for the first time.

Welcome, I am so pleased to be here and meet all of you.  This is my 5^th year of teaching animation at Gov School and probably my 10^th teaching Flash to someone, both here at LC and NVCC (Northern VA Community College).

I am Kristin Reiber Harris. I have been adjunct faculty at LC for 7 years teaching in the Art and Design dept. I have had an animation business for over 25 years, primarily in the DC market before I moved to Lynchburg. I worked with a variety of clients, but my primary interest has always been educational media for young children. I was very pleased to provide over 40 animated shorts to HBO Family and have my work included in numerous children’s film festivals all over the country.

I am currently developing apps for young children that introduce objects from museum collections via both narrative and alphabetical sequences. I am very excited to introduce you to the software I am using for app development, Demibooks Composer Studio. It is both accessible and robust. We will start our process of content creation and animation working with Flash to get the fundamentals and develop artwork and animated sequences.

What’s it going to be like in here for 4 weeks? I am a huge proponent of nurturing creativity by giving you lots of room to do what you want. We will start out with fairly specific skill building assignments, but then I encourage you to develop more complex projects that make sense to you.  If you have a burning desire to do a specific thing, I will facilitate that as much as possible. 

What do I ask of you? Be here both physically and mentally, have a good attitude, focus on your work, share and help others.

This course is about basic skill building, but more important it’s about process.  How do I go about learning what I need to know to do what I want?  How do I get around a roadblock?  How do I answer that one question that will open new functionality for me?

I am very big on notebooks. I want you to have a plan.  You can change your plan a million times, but you need to document where you start and links to your research.

Parents, please leave a note or two for your student in their books to encourage them. There will be ups and downs during the month.

Welcome and I really look forward to working with you.

Questions?