Challenging Student Creativity with Great Results: iPad Camp at ACOA

Artwork created in Procreate by iPad Camp student

The last full week in July was iPad Camp at the Academy Center of the Arts in Lynchburg. This was an especially wonderful group of kids. There were 3 boys and 3 girls. That turns out to be a great balance of energy and skills. The girls were older and more focused, the boys were younger and higher energy.  These camps provide kids with an opportunity to challenge their creative problem solving skills by learning media production tools in a non-structured environment. I am most appreciative of ACOA efforts to develop arts/technology programming.

New App in Development: New Workflow

Kristin Reiber Harris
KristinHarrisDesign.com

I am fixating on bird these days; little birds, big birds, silly birds and even realistic birds. My new app project is all about birds. Birds that will make three year olds giggle and hopefully a lot more.  I am combining some of my favorite old and new tools on this project as well as getting back to my roots as an animator.

 

Step One: Textures in Procreate

I start this process of creating a menagerie of birds by developing textures in Procreate on my iPad. I became familiar with Procreate teaching students how to use it working with Demibooks Composer Pro, a development tool for iOS apps. The beauty of Procreate is the artwork is created on the iPad which facilitates import to Composer Pro.

Art as a Window on the World

Kristin Reiber Harris
www.KristinHarrisDesign.com

Play art and celebrate world cultures!

Get a sneak preview of soon to be release app I Can Do That! A Kids World Art Game 

After many months in development, our new app "I Can Do That! A Kids World Art Game" will soon be released. The lengthy development time is due to a number of factors. 

Check Out These Student Authors and Illustrators Published on iPads

Still feeling the glow of the recent Digital Storytelling Workshop at the Startup Summer Institute at Howard University's Middle School of Mathematics and Science. This program was a collaboration between Global Sleepover and Demibooks to help students develop global awareness and produce interactive books on iPads. Representing Demibooks, I joined Geeta Raj of Global Sleepover for the second week of the camp. The first week she focused on helping the students develop their skills as storytellers and illustrators. She worked with them to craft stories about different countries around the world. I assisted the students with Demibooks Composer Pro. This app for creating apps, let them load their text, illustrations and audio files and add animation and interactivity to their stories and publish their work.

Isaiah King's Cover Artwork

Global Storytelling, iPad Camp and Publishing Student Authors/Illustrators

Kristin Reiber Harris

I joined Geeta Raj of Global Sleepover on Monday, July 28th at Howard University in Washington, DC for the Digital Storytelling Workshop at the Startup Summer Institute

at Howard University's Middle School of Mathematics and Science. This program provided a group of students with the opportunity to explore app design as well as storytelling and interactivity.  I arrived for the second week of the camp on behalf of Demibooks to help the students produce interactive books on iPads. The first week of the camp, Geeta worked with the students writing stories with a focus on global adventures. Each story that took place in different countries with characters from that country featured in the stories.

I was very impressed with the campus. Undergraduate Library, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Lessons Learned from Seven iPad Camps

This camp was my 7th iPad Camp of the summer but my first specifically as a trainer for Demibooks. Emboldened with a wealth of experience working with students 8 to 13 (some adults too) I had a grasp on what could be accomplished in this short period of time. Earlier in July, I spent two weeks working with students at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia. Our sessions were only 3 hours long for four afternoons a week. The students had been able to write, illustrate and produce stories that incorporated a variety of interactive components and animation. I appreciated that we would have a lot more time with the students at this camp and I saw the benefits of this extra time.

My New Best Friends: An App is Born

I want you to meet a few of my new best friends. I have immersed myself in my first iOS app project which just yesterday became available in the App Store. I have been creating educational media project for kids for many years, but app production is new for me. I had some fits and starts before I found the right production environment for me, Demibooks Composer Studio.

The App

Duck Takes A Ride: An Art Story is a narrative about 8 ancient animals from China and Egypt. I found the images first and the story evolved. I mean really, when you have a gorgeous horse and a cart, something special has to happen.

 

Artist: China, Sichuan province
 1st century/2nd century CE
China: Eastern Han period (25–220 CE)
Portland Art Museum

Why Chinese Bronzes?

I wish I could remember when I fell in love with ancient Chinese bronze sculpture. It's was a long time ago. Thirty years ago I made a ceramic copy of a ding, a ceremonial vessel. Not exactly like the one below, but similar.

Brooklyn Museum   Ding   Cast bronze with inlay China  12th-11th century B.C.E.

I'm not even sure if at the time I really understood what it was. I just knew there was something about the object that captivated me.  As I learned more about ancient Chinese art I discovered a cache of animal bronzes that I knew kids would love.

From the Freer Museum in Washington, DC.

Where are the objects?

I started collecting images of ancient animals from a various museums that allow certain images in their collections available for use in media projects. Some images were put in the public domain while other institutions indicate there are no known copyright restrictions. The Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum and LACMA collections played a pivitol role in this project.

It was searching the archives of the Brooklyn Museum that I realized I wanted to include animals from ancient Egypt with the Chinese bronzes. What's not to love about this adorable hedgehog?

What Other Animals?

A bixie is an mythical Chinese lion-like animal also known as a chimera. She has wings and apparently was brightly painted at one time. I love her expression and the idea of including a fantasy animal in the menagerie.

This faience monkey "lives" at the Brooklyn Museum. She can do amazing things with her tail, which is almost hidden in the sculpture.

 Stay Tuned to Meet the Rest of the Gang.

Download this app the let me know what you think. Share it with the children in your world.

Teaching Demibooks Composer Studio: What I Learned

I just had my first experience teaching the iPad app production software I have been using for about 6 months, Demibooks Composer Studio. I was very pleased with the students projects but have some definite ideas about how I will go about introducing the production process with this software in the future.

Show A Wide Variety of Samples

My students at the Lynchburg College residential Governor's School of Math, Science and Technology were distracted by the fact that my work and the samples available within the software were all young children's media. Also, the Composer Studio in-app samples were all in book format. For most of the students, the idea of making a kids picture book was not all that exciting.

I wish I had known about this video. You don't need to understand the language to want to know more about this game, Origem. An iPad version is soon to be released in the US. (in English) Here are some stills from the video. Origem is based on an ancient game indigenous to South America.

Ancient board game for the iPad developed by Marcelo Raymundo with Demibooks Composer

Origem developed by Marcelo Raymundo

game app developed by Marcelo Raymundo

As Composer products are used by a wider range of producer/developers, I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Give Students A Specific Assignment

Being very specific may sound like a no brainer, but I really like to give students in the Gov School environment a lot of freedom. I make a big deal at the beginning of the course that I want to them to work on projects that excite them. I envisioned that they would be interested in making interactive comic books, graphic novels and games.

However, that is not at all the way I have approached teaching Flash to students over the years. Exercises for skill building are different. I have a very set protocol.  I start with a blank keyframe animation of something like fireworks to get students used to the interface and the timeline. Then we work into a short linear character animation.  We look at that delightful Pixar animation of the lamps. My point being a simple inanimate object can be an endearing character. Of course Luxo is a very sophisticated character created by geniuses in the field, but I hope they get my point. A box or a line can be an endearing or charismatic character.

PIxar's Luxo, Jr.  Character animation at its finest.

Ideas for Skill Building in Composer Studio

Project 1:A possible first project might be to set up a series of pages and a navigation system that mimic a simple 5 page website of their choice. It could be all text based, text being the one asset that can be created in Composer Studio. The students would not be concerned about designing a document, they would be using an existing interactive structure to explore the app.  

Project 2:All of the students had just created an interactive project in Flash. A good second project would be to rebuild that same project, the assets have all been built. That provides the opportunity to import assets, an essential skill, and begin to learn the system for programming interactivity. Some of the students had previous programming experience but none of them seemed to have major obstacles getting used to the system in Composer Studio.

"All About Me" projects have been popular in the past. It's a great way for the students to share information and photos with other students in the class and for me to learn more about then too.  Assets are most likely on their phones or easily accessible and they can get right to the tasks at hand, importing and designing. My favorite graphic novel is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This is her story about growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution. It was also made not an animated film. Great inspiration for a personal project.

Project 3:  I love the idea of assigning an interactive project to make chocolate chip cookies. I let them adapt that idea very broadly. One Gov School student did a project about how to bowl. The very inspiring example I show them is Emily Birr's Origami instructional animation created in my Flash class at Northern Va. Community College/Alexandria many years ago. She did a brilliant job.

What's the Take Away?

I am remembering the Sandbox Summit at MIT in April and being introduced to the work of musician Chris Donnelly.  He has a fascinating discussion about creativity and structure on his blog.

I need to remember that there is a balance between too much and too little structure and how that affects the creative process. I need to be sure not to err on the side of not delivering enough structure to stimulate the best outcomes. I have a million ideas for things I'd like to do, that doesn't mean the students come into my class with that same archive of ideas and the ability to work independently to make them happen.

Hello World. Welcome to Demibooks Composer Studio

I have been working toward today for a number of months now. It started in April when I emailed Professor Danny Cline, the director of the Governor's School of Math, Science & Technology here at Lynchburg College, requesting a few iPads for my Gov School students this year. I was unaware at the time forces (thanks below) at Lynchburg College were in the process of procuring a large technology grant specifically for the purpose of stimulating creativity in the arts. What followed was the miraculous dovetailing of my original request to Danny and the grant. What manifest was many iPads, apps for creating content on the iPad and related hardware to wrangle 30 iPads at once. With a little bit of hand wringing, I was able to get my friends in IT to order the supplies in time for Gov School students to use them. Yipee. And with a lot of hard work from everyone, it all came together.  Today the students worked on the iPads and were introduced to Demibooks Composer Studio.

Demibooks Composer Studio interface as you open a new document to start working.  May not seem all that exciting, but this is the front door to an universe of possibilities.

It actually all began many months ago when I read an email from my friend Lisa Goldman, organizer of Women in Animation in NYC. Will Denton was presenting information about "a powerful and intuitive authoring tool" that could incorporate animation. That sent me to Demibooks website and our lives became entwined.

So this morning I showed the students the two apps I am currently developing in Demibooks Composer Studio, Duck Takes a Ride - An Art Story and ABC.DC - An Art Alphabet as a way to introduce the interface and some of the functionality of the app. Yes, Demibooks Composer Studio is an iPad app.  All of the production is done on the iPad. My interest was to share my enthusiasm with the students, provide enough information to get them going, and see what happened. 

My project Duck Takes A Ride - An Art Story to be released soon.

 I am especially interested in having the students explore the physics capabilities. I have not done so at all in my own development work. I challenged them, as game players, to come up with a game that works in this structure. That's one reason I think Composer Studio's Hot Zones are so important. Hot Zones are a new feature in the latest version of the software. A Hot Zone is created, targets identified and the fun begins. As a target object enters or leaves a Hot Zone, a myriad of Behaviors can be programmed. I was very pleased with the results I got right away. They are taking the challenge.

Sean is one of the more enthusiastic Composer Studio users. This is the interface for his game that uses the iPad accelerometer and tilting functionality.

The dream academic environment in one inwhich tools and instruction are provided for students who are motivated to accept the challenge to own the tools and use them in their own creative expression.  In doing so, they share their findings and new knowledge with each other and inspire even more experimentation and creative expression. 

Adriana is working on this love story game.

One of the nicest surprises has been  Procreate, an app for making art on the iPad. I knew other Composer Studio developers were using it to make content on their iPads, however I had not used it before I dabbled about before introducing it to the students. They have done some very interesting work. Here is an image from Eli, one of the most prolific and inventive artists of the group.

Eli's image created in Procreate

Another student is working on an animated story about the life cycle of a butterfly.  Congratulations students for taking the challenge to create content with these exciting new tools.

An image from Faiza's life cycle animated story

I would like to thank the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges,  Richard Pumphrey, professor in the Art Department, Carol Hardin, Director of Grants Advancement, Deborah Blanchard, Director of Communications and Marketing, Danny Cline, Director of the Governor's School, Jackie Almond, Director Technology Support Services, Sharon Keefe, Technology Business Manager, Charley Butcher, Educational Technology Specialist and Donna White, Technology Support Services Technician for all of your help.  And all of the others who played a role in getting us up and running by early July.

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?

 

Demibooks: iPad App Development Solution

Soon to be released first app in artEpants series, Duck Takes A Ride

One on my dreams for many years has been to animate great master art works. Not all of them of course.  It still sounds rather ambitious. In fact when I started my work in animation over 20 years ago, the very first projects I worked on were animating my own art. It was a natural segue into the kids educational media that was to become the heart of my animation career. The culmination of that work was my wonderful relationship with HBO Family and the series of interstitials I worked on with them and the bilingual animated DVD I produced after that experience.

 

                         sample from "I Want to Be" series for HBO Family

Fast forward to today's technology landscape and iPads have significantly changed the way children access media. This has been a very exciting development that drew me back into the media production after spending a number of years focusing on my own fine art work. What followed was the search for the right tools for this new landscape of tablet delivered interactive media. Flash was the obvious choice for me because of my long history as a user and teacher of the software.  My skills as a programmer are limited and the requirements for iOS development with Flash were limited for me IF I wanted to be directly involved in the programing.

First Flash Project: ABC Art programmed in Flash with associate Heather Larkin

At first I didn't really understand why it was so important for me to be doing the programming.  I was working with my good friend Heather Larkin, talented animator and skilled programmer.  In our months of exchanging files I realized that my creative process for developing was really limited by not completely understanding how the code was written. I realized it would actually facilitate the creative process to think in code as I was conceptualizing my project.

Enter Demibooks with it's suite of app development software.

Demibooks

I read a post by Lisa Goldman of Women in Animation about Demibooks Composer. Demibooks had done a presentation for the group. I checked out their site and was very intrigued. 

What Demibooks offers is a book related format for developing iOS apps that allows for the inclusion of both animation and video but that has simplified the programming for even kids to use. (a theory I will test this summer) Predefined scripts are available in easily accessible language.

They also distribute books made on Composer through their own curated store, Demibooks Storytime.

 

The biggest initial stumbling block for me was that the iPad is the production tool.  I am used to working on my Mac Pro tower with 2 monitors, etc. This just seemed wrong. However, it didn't take long for me to realize the one major payoff for this arrangement. With the tap of one button I am proofing my app real time on my iPad.  None of the foolishness of Provisioning Certificates, etc that were required when I was working with Flash.

After about 6 months of working with Composer and getting to know the company and developing community I am very happy to have my eggs in this basket. Demibooks has been extremely responsive to users questions and requests. There is a forum through GetSatisfaction for communicating with other users and the Demibooks staff.

First in my app series Duck Takes A Ride as seen in production mode on Composer Studio

As I mentioned previously, an understanding of the capabilities of the software and how it "thinks" are really pivotal in using it to best advantage. I have reached a comfort level now where I can explore possibilities that will enhance my creative process. It's very much like a puzzle or understanding a system. The more simple processes are combined the potential grows exponentially.

Interest in Demibooks is growing fast. Lynda.com did a documentary about Stacey Williams, illustrator, publisher and educator about her work with Demibooks and her e-publishing course at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD).

I am indebted to the crew at Demibooks for what they have made available to media producers. They have been accessible and very responsive to adding functionality that their users would like. The upgrades I have seen since I have been working with Composer have been frequent and significant. The new app Composer Share, which allows me to send a Read Only version of my working document to beta testers and clients is a huge plus and really necessary for the software to be a viable production tool.

If you are working in Composer Studio, please share your experiences.