iPad Camp Lives!

Kristin Reiber Harris

We are in the middle of the last week of our 4 session iPad Camp at Lynchburg College, sponsored by the Daura Gallery. It's been a blast. Each week there are two sessions offered, one for kids 8 to 12 in the afternoon and a second session for teens and adults in the evening.

I am helping Ryan and Callie work on Composer Pro  Credit: Lynchburg College

Why are we doing this?

My objective with the camp is to demonstrate what a great tool the iPad is for stimulating creativity and give the students an opportunity to play and experiment. I introduce four apps that I have found to be very accessible to kids and adults and get them rolling on creating their own media projects. The apps we are using are FlipBoomCartoon (animation), iMovie (video productiton), ComposerPro (book/game apps) and Procreate (art). It is very gratifying to see the students just take off and jump in.

Kids, Art and Motion

I am still feeling the glow of spending the afternoon Sunday helping kids make mobiles. We all had such a good time. I have been leading monthly art workshops for kids at the Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College for 4 years. The workshops are turning into family programs. It's fun for everyone. Sunday I had almost as many adults as kids, including mothers, god-mothers and grandmothers. It takes a village as they say. The kids get more help than I can provide alone and it really is a party.  Originally I was concerned about parents micro-managing their kids projects. Only once has this been a problem. I try to gently make it clear the kids are the creative instigators, the parents are their to help, not direct or criticize.

We used paper clips to chain the drawings the kids made to a paper disc or branches. Sadie took a cue from my sample project with birds and made her own bird mobile. She had a wonderful time, can't you tell? I adore the pride these kids take in their work. It's pure pleasure to cultivate their makers mentality.

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?

 

Wild About WWF Together

Why do I love this app so much?  Is it that I was just at the National Zoo in Washington, DC and watched pandas eating bamboo in the Panda House?  Is it because everyone loves animals? Is it because it is engaging for both kids and adults? Or just that WWF Together is one of the most beautifully designed, clever apps I have seen for the iPad?

The World Wildlife Fund just released their first US iPad app, WWF Together.  It is free and available for download.  Together features endangered animals that WWF works to protect, including giant pandas, marine turtles, tigers, bison, polar bears, snow leopards, whales and elephants. More species are to be added.

When an animal is selected, you are greeted with a large portrait and text that describes a prominent characteristic of the animal. The sections are based on the mobile magazine model of accessing pages vertically and  horizontally. A grid is superimposed on the screen at touch to diagram the options.  It is usually two or three pages vertically and 3 or 4 pages horizontally.  As you move around the app, you get visual cues as to where you are. Each animal has a fact sheet with population numbers in the wild, habitat, weight, height, distance from your location (when location is enabled) and a cute revolving 3D model of the globe that shows were the animal lives in the wild.

Have I raved about the photographs and video clips yet?  They are so compelling.  WWF obviously works with some of the best photographers in the world to get such intimate portraits that tug at our hearts and minds. I am watching a panda eating bamboo right now in one of the video segments.

A design element or rather a concept element that ties this app together is origami.  This is so brilliant. Origami appeals to kids and adults alike. At the end of each animal section you are prompted to go to instructions about how to make the animal by folding paper. You see an animation of a piece of paper folding into the specific animal you have just learned about through text and images. There is a link to instructions for the origami as well as links to share on Facebook, Twitter or to email a friend.  I suspect these links will be used often and play a major role in how effective this app is to advance their mission helping save endangered species. WWF has truly integrated this app with social media and their message.

All of these features are presented in a document that is designed for clarity and accessibility. The photo galleries have the standard icon of an i in a circle to indicate additional information.  The succinct text is placed over the image in white full caps to insure it can be read.  Any extraneous design elements are not frills but used to support clarity and access to information.  It is a beautiful example of a well designed document.

I am really looking forward to sharing this new find with my iPad buddies of all ages. 

Meet Tapook's CEO Giorgio Fipaldini

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tapook CEO, Giorgio Fipaldini (with the assistance of Isabella Pingitore as translator) via email.  I reviewed their app PlayART recently and wanted to follow up to find out more about the company and their development process. PlayART is a playground for learning about five masters of late 19th and 20th century art and tools to create images with components of their work.  I will include a few images some young friends and I made with the app. 

pieces from Paul Klee's work

About Tapook
 

   iArt4Kidz: Tapook is a relatively new company.  Can you tell us what your background was before Tapook?  Publishing, media production, artist?

Giorgio Fipaldini: Tapook’s background is an added value to the company. Our vision follows a holistic concept of digital publishing, involving people whose expertise comes from different and complementary fields, such as publishing, video production, visual communication and software development. With regard to my background, I have a ten year experience as a creative director in digital media: from the first websites for Giorgio Armani to the production of dvd-roms for Barilla, via countless motion graphic videos for MTV Italia.

   iA4K: Do you find having offices in two countries gives you a wider perspective on trends in current culture that may be relevant to media production?

GF: Sure, it does. In order to expand your horizons, you can’t limit yourself to look at the world from the web only. And the most cosmopolitan and vibrant city near Milan is London.

   iA4K: Tapook has released two very different apps, can you tell us your vision for the company and what you see coming down the road. 

GF: To begin with we wondered: what has not been published on the App Store yet? So we published the first (unofficial) app on the New York Marathon. Today, to ask this question is reductive. “Paper by 53” is a clear example of how improving something already made by others, can be very rewarding: more than 1,500,000 downloads in the first two weeks.Therefore, the kind of questions we ask ourselves now are: what can we improve, innovate and transform? How can we enrich the user’s experience and exploration, and inspire him/her? The best place to ask this question, for us, is the bookshop.

pieces from Henri Rousseau's work

  

About PlayART

iA4K: PlayART is such a delightful experience.  Can you retrace for us how the idea for this app evolved?  A lightning bolt of inspiration (from what source?) or developed slowly over time.  How much did it change in development?

GF: As I said bookshops are inspirational places to us. It was just by leafing through art books for children at a bookshop that we had the intuition: what if these paintings could be moved or animated and children could play with them? Perhaps they will look at art with more curiosity and interest, and have fun. Children would be rewarded and stimulated by the creative process. From this insight to PlayART’s final version, the path was long and not without revisions.

   iA4K: How long was it from concept to delivery to the app store?

GF: PlayART’s production period lasted 7 months: from the first creative briefings in December 2011, to the pubblication on the App Store last June 2012. A total of 12 people, including 2 children, have contributed to the app, divided between Milan, London and Modena.  Isabella, Guido and myself, the core team, followed every step of the project.

   iA4K: What is your favorite part/activity in PlayART? 

GF:The section “My Favorite”. To be able to combine elements from artists so different in styles allows for unexpected creative results.

mash up of all of the artists

   iA4K: What was your process in selecting these artists?  Was it important to have them be as famous as they are?  How would it have changed the activity if your app featured artists just as exciting, but not as world reknown?

GF: Selection process was very important. We wanted to offer a broad overview of artistic genres to stimulate children’s imagination in different ways, and at the same time, offer a vision,  although concise, of the evolution of painting.

However, the choice of the artists was mostly influenced by two practical aspects: they had to be in the public domain and their artworks had to lend themselves to the kind of post production work needed. From a marketing viewpoint the artists’ popularity has definetely helped, but the most important things is for average adults to know them. In this way they can share and enrich the child’s experience.

   iA4K: The video clips are a wonderful addition to the creative activity of the app.  How did these evolve?  The black and white artwork is a delightful counterpoint to the fully saturated paintings.  Who did that illustration?

GF: The motion graphic video clips of the artists are proving very popular, thanks to Ellis and Sasha’s sweet voices. We’re now working on French, Spanish and Italian versions for future releases and a tutorial video with illustrated animation of the artists to guide users through the app. The drawings in the videos come from my notebook when I was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan: I only had to adapt and animate them. It was the most enjoyable part of the job. 

pieces from Paul Klee's work

   iA4K: Can you talk about your funding for the app?  Did you have investors or is the company self-financing development?

GF: The company is currently self-funded: PlayART will be the company’s calling card for investors.

    iA4K:  What were the tools you used in development, ie software, etc?

GF: In each project the first tools we used were pen and paper, then Apple Keynote. I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for the graphic design, After Effects and Final Cut for the videos, and finally, xcode for the software development.

   iA4K: Did you use focus groups to test the app in development...or was your research with kids less formal than that?

GF: In the early stages of development the app was tested on internal groups and children from family friends. Later, we had the chance to test the beta version in a Elementary  classroom with children and teachers. It was a very rewarding experience.

pieces from Claude Monet's work

    iA4K:  How will your measure the success of your kids apps?  (or any app)

GF: To measure success by the number of downloads is misleading: an app which is bad, but free is likely to be downloaded more than a good one with a fee. With regard to PlayART, we measure success on the feedback from children, parents and teachers. As long as a child asks to play with PlayART, or parents wonder at their 5 year old child’s request to visit a museum, or a teacher thank us because she can teach impressionism to primary schoolchildren, then PlayART has been successful to us.

About Kids Media

    iA4K:   What are your all time favorite apps?  for kids?   for adults?

GF: All time best: Flipboard

Favorite app for kids: Barefoot World Atlas

Favorite app for adults: Al Gore - Our Choice

    iA4K:  What do you remember from your own childhood that is inspiring you in the media development for kids?

GF: As a child I spent a lot of time breaking toys down. I wanted to find out how things were made and, above all, if I could build them up with pieces from other toys. Curiosity and creativity and a will to innovate are the most important factors behind our apps.

Thank you Giorgio and Isabella for sharing this information with us about your work.  The very best of luck as you move forward and I look forward to seeing what's next and how PlayART will evolve.