Onscreen, a figure fashioned from wire and clay flips, bends and twists like an Olympic gymnast.
The figure, built by students in the Digital Arts Academy at the Center for the Creative Arts, starred in a stop-motion video the students created using a webcam and an iMac.
The academy, founded by CCArts board member Teresa Berry, is designed to give kids between 12 and 15 the opportunity to explore the endless artistic possibilities afforded through the world of computer graphics.
“We’re well beyond gluing macaroni to paper plates,” Berry said.
She founded Digital Arts Academy LLC, a separate entity from CCArts, because nothing like it exists for students in her target age group. They’re too young to attend high schools or colleges specializing in the digital arts, she said, and computer-centric summer programs tend to be held at universities with advanced labs.
But many kids have a real interest in computers, as evidenced by the popularity of video games and children’s movies heavy on the computer-generated imagery, she said.
“Everything’s animation these days, from ‘Avatar’ to ‘Toy Story 3’, and the software is so accessible right now,” she said. “Nowadays, you buy an iMac and some software and you can do what the professionals do.”
Berry is offering weekly camps through August 20, with topics ranging from 3D graphic illustration to green screen video effects to pen tablet illustration.
In the stop-motion camp, students move objects a tiny bit at a time, using a webcam to photograph each motion. Specialized software then combines the motions into a seamless video.
And, unlike traditional summer programs where campers take home things like friendship bracelets, Berry’s pen tablet class, for example, will send the kids home with a digitally-designed t-shirts or comic strip.
The instructors, graduates of the Delaware College of Art and Design, work with the kids to help them with techniques they haven’t been able to figure out on their own, she said.
Camper Kris Theorin, 12, of Landenberg, Pa., already had some experience in stop motion animation through videos he’s produced using Star Wars Lego characters.
He’s enjoyed the camp because it’s given him the opportunity to work with other media, like clay, and hone his skills using a webcam and stop motion software, he said.
“I like that I get to make unique scenarios because there’s such a wide variety of things you can use in animations,” he said.
