Avatars

Vote for Avatars in the Digital Heroes Awards

Avatars has been shortlisted for the prestigious Talk Talk Digital Heroes Awards.

WE NEED YOUR VOTES TO WIN!

Click here to vote - http://bit.ly/WSsgK

If we win we’ll to use the cash prize for a series of interactive art projects for young people in Sheffield. But we’re not counting our chickens just yet… please vote for us - a few clicks could make all the difference!

Digital Art Workshops

Lovebytes delivered a series of public workshops between 27 June and 4 July 2009 aimed at encouraging young people and their parents to get creative with digital technology. These workshops were part of Showcomotion Young People’s Film Festival in Sheffield and built on the methods used in the Avatars project for a broader age range and explored a wider range of technologies and techniques.

The series began with a free introduction to Scratch at Access Space as part of UnSheffield. Then the following week, in the Avatars Game Workshop, children and parents made characters using craft foam material, photographed them with digital cameras and made computer games using Scratch.

Wak Studios delivered a 3D Animation Workshop using Autodesk Maya, the software used by animation studios such as Pixar and Disney.

The Interactive and Generative Art Workshop offered a chance for young people to learn about computers and systems to generate and interact with art. The sessions will introduce what generative art is and how systems can be used to control and form artworks. After this there will be a hands-on session where the group can play with a range of technologies and see the ideas in action. This workshop was run by the School of Algorithmic and Interactive Art.

These workshops were delivered in partnership with Showcomotion Young People’s Film Festival, Access Space and UnSheffield. Equipment was supplied by Sheffield South City Learning Centre.

In a nutshell...

Since January, Janet Jennings and Jon Harrison from the Sheffield based digital arts organisation Lovebytes have been working with Y3 children at Hunter’s Bar Junior School on an innovative creative technology project called ‘Avatars’. The project aims to develop creative skills and digital literacy amongst primary aged school children and has resulted in a variety of exciting outcomes which you’ll be seeing on display around Sheffield as part of the Children’s Festival.

The whole year group began by looking at character design; they had fun finding objects with human characteristics and then looked at the designs of some of their favourite characters in advertising, films, video games and websites. Inspired, they went on to design hundreds of their own characters or ‘Avatars’ using a mixture of art and craft and digital media. They then used these characters in their own computer games and interactive art.

They were introduced to a computer programming language called Scratch which is a great tool for quickly developing animation and ideas. A smaller group of children went on to programme more complex games, thinking creatively and working collaboratively on mathematical and computational ideas, learning some of the fundamental principles of computer programming on the way. Scratch is free software, so the children can continue developing their own projects in the ICT suite or using computers at home. You can see the children’s work on the Scratch website and download the code to make your own games at www.scratch.mit.edu/users/lovebytes

The Avatars project has shown the children how digital creativity can be applied to a wide range of media, with some exciting real-world outcomes. In the final week of the project the children were treated to a presentation by Doncaster based Wak studios who showed them how their Avatars could be made into 3D characters for animation. The children then created a storyboard and recorded sound for a short film sequence which will be displayed in an exhibition documenting the Avatars project at the Showroom Cinema 13 June - 9 July 2009 during the Children’s Festival and Showcomotion Film Festival. They were also very excited to see their graphic design characters in the publicity for the Sheffield’s Children’s Festival.

Mr Bywaters says “The Lovebytes Avatar project has been a fantastic experience for the whole year group in school. The project has really improved the children’s computer skills, but perhaps more importantly has opened their eyes to the creative possibilties opened up by using technology. The opportunity to create their own computer game, whilst learning programming skills, has really captured their imaginations and made their new learning fun and relevant.”

Avatars was run by Lovebytes with funding from Arts Council England, Screen Yorkshire and Sheffield City Council.

To find out more about Lovebytes activities including workshops and exhibitions at the Children’s Festival and Showcomotion visit http://www.lovebytes.org.uk
Special thanks to: Mr Bywaters, Richard Johnson (Director of the Children’s Festival), Gavin Saxton of Wak Studios and Vicky Morris of Cube Magazine