So today was divided in to four activities the first three were about QR Codes. The first activity was a short 15 minute talk about how QR Codes work, how they are read by machines and error correction. The second part was getting the students to hide a secret message in a QR Code that they could take home, and the third was getting the students to colour in A4 size QR Codes with a giant question mark below it and to hide around the school, just to get people asking about them (the code sent anybody who scanned them to the school website). It was really good fun and the students definitely learned how they worked as I quizzed them on it all afterwards. The last thirty minutes was spent planning out more of their Augmented Reality games which we will reveal in a couple of weeks. You can download the talk as a .pdf file here. We are covering QR Codes, AR, pattern recognition and facial recognition in this series of workshops. Any questions just ask me twitter @pixelh8 .

So today was the start of something new for both me and the students, Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality or (AR) “is is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. ” (Wikipedia). In short the phone or computer adds pictures or information to a live image, augmenting it. I was a bit apprehensive about doing this workshop as I had never run it before, I have done loads of work with the age range which in this case was 9-year-olds but you never know if they are going to get it or not. They did, they really did. I started the session explaining it in words only, then I showed them a few pictures of existing apps that use AR, and then revealed to them just how wonderful it is by running some demos on the iPad 2. They were blown away, not only by the AR but by the fact they over the next 5 weeks would be harnessing this system to bring their ideas to life. AR can be a tricky subject to get your head around but we managed and the 12 students, divided in to four groups of three have already set about planning out their ideas for their augmented reality projects. We have started to talk about how AR markers work, we are also learning about QR Codes (as shown in the picture), facial and object recognition software and next session they will be designing their own QR Codes to act as markers for their games.

The head of the school popped by to see how it was all going and asked one of the students who simply replied that it was “Awesome”, so I think they are enjoying working with AR.

As I mentioned I was a bit apprehensive about running the project, as I myself am new to the subject and I needed to know I could do it, before they put forward their ideas. I had also pre-made some ideas just in case the concept proved too much for them to take on board, but they really weren’t necessary. I can save those Ideas for another time. I am now really pleased and really excited about the project and can’t wait to see how they progress next week.

Today was the day the kids got to see the three web apps they designed , I am really pleased with how they all turned out and the kids were too. It is really nice to see something they designed running on a bang-up-to-date iPad, (imagine being nine and already have your first web app out). We naturally spent the first twenty minutes of the session playing through all the apps, they were too excited to do anything else, we quickly followed this with short written reviews and comments about each others games and now that they have finished, what if anything they would have done differently. We then moved on to designing a print logo for each game, trying to encapsulate as much of the game in just the logo alone. At the end of the session they were allowed to return to their apps for 10 minutes as they had worked so very hard.

“Electric Zombie Inc.” has released “Warfare: Revenge of Germany” here, “Monkey Business” has released  “Animal Time” here and finally “Rainbow Buddies” released “Dress Up Pets” here. They will only be up for a short period of time as already they have been pushing my server to its limits. We may be tweaking them a bit soon as well, you’ll soon be able to control “W:ROG” with keys as well as the touchscreen and “Animal Time” may get a few more levels too.  I am really pleased I got to do this project with Springfield Junior School and the fact they can access it in both a browser and iPad is amazing. So just to recap 12, 9-year-olds spent two hours a week with me for five weeks (10 hours total, 8 hours designing, discussing, drawing, animating and brainstorming and 2 hours of playing and discussion today) and I think they did a pretty good job of it too. I really must thank YoYo Games again for their support and for making Game Maker HTML 5 so useful. Let us know what you think of the games @pixelh8 on twitter.

So today was the final session where the students could add things to their games and it was amazing to hear how organized they were. I said at the start of the session that they had one and a half hours left to draw everything they need, so they didn’t rush to get started with the computers they first discussed “priorities”. They had a chat in their groups about what stage everything was at and what things were more or less important if they get done or not. It was amazing to see. As you can see the graphics are stunning and I genuinely mean that, the games are really well planned out, with a lot of attention to detail.

It was good session and although they are a little sad that they won’t see me again for two weeks they are happy that when I return they will be able to play on their web apps / games, and hopefully you will to. So I have two weeks to make three simple web apps using all of their assets, design guides and flow charts.

This weeks session was all about the assets the apps are to have, the backgrounds, the buttons, the characters, so it was a lot of computer graphics based stuff. It was amazing to see how skilled the students were at using different graphics software, bearing in mind that they are only 8 t 9-years-old. I can confirm that the different “companies” or groups have their names and debut title names ready, and they are as follows. “Electric Zombie Inc.” will be releasing “Warfare: Revenge of Germany”, “Monkey Business” will be releasing “Animal Time” and finally “Rainbow Buddies” will be releasing “Dress Up Pets”. Three very different apps and groups. One group all girls, one group all boys and the last group has two of each. I have to say some of the character designs are so good I could actually see them being used in a “commercial” game, absolutely brilliant. Our last session will be this Thursday after which I will code the apps with all their ideas and reveal it to them on the 12th of April. The games should go live to the public shortly after that, pending a child safety review.

Today was fantastic, the students really impressed me. Today’s session was all about analysing existing apps we looked at Angry Birds Seasons, Where’s My Water, Moshi Monsters, Cut the Rope, Solving Maths, Maths Brain and OCARBOT. We looked at how different screens are laid out, the sequence of them, and even made flow charts of how different screens interact with others. We looked at the generic conventions of icons in popular games; a cog means “settings”, an arrow pointing left means “back”, and arrow going round in a circle means “reset the level”. We looked at company splash screens, game start screens, world and level select screens. Main game screens, pause screens and options screens.

Through prior exposure to the generic conventions of both layout and icon design the students were able to deduce what would happen on each button press even on games they weren’t familiar with. Have you noticed Angry Birds Seasons, Where’s My Water, & Cut the Rope all use padlocks for locked levels, you also have to collect three items either stars or ducks per level. Why do companies put their logos at the beginning of games? Why do we have loading bars? In Solving Maths and Maths Brain colours were shown to be important; Green was used on notifications and buttons for Go, Good, and other positive affirmations while Red was Stop, Bad and negative outcomes. A student noticed back buttons were often used in the far corner of games. We discussed where the “resume”, “back” and “pause” icons originate from and if they are used in anything else like DVD players, CD players? We also discussed why it is helpful to the user to sometimes use familiar icons to help them learn their way around a game.

It was a step-by-step screen by screen analysis of different games and although some of these things are obvious to us as consumers, even subconscious at times, it is important to say them out loud and discuss them when you are planning to make your own app. After the talk the students took to drawing their own buttons and company logos, several students made flow charts of the apps life-cycle which would put many degree students I know to shame. Overall I was really impressed that they were able to stay focused during such a long session of contextual analysis, well done to the year 4s (8-year-olds). It was the first time I have ever got to teach with an iPad and it was great to let them all have a go to see how the machine worked and what it can do.

The picture in the top left is the company logo for “Rainbow Buddies” there is also “Electrical Zombies Inc.” and “Monkey Business” expect major web app releases from them early spring 2012.

So today was the start of the the new project with Springfield Junior School, not animation, not game design but web apps. The projects we have done in the past were great but we wanted to do something bang up to date. The school is very fortunate in that it has a few iPads for the students to use and I make apps all the times  so I thought why not make some apps.  Today was all about introductions and brainstorming dividing the 12 8 to 9-year-olds in to three groups it soon became quite apparent that they already had a good idea of what they want to make and they soon set to work.

We have five weeks to make three web apps and they already have their ideas in place, next week we will look at interface design and start to draw the buttons and the screens for the apps. The ideas are great but you’ll have to wait to see them. It was interesting that they all wanted them to be social apps or at least involve more than one person participating.

Today was the final session of the animation group, last week they worked really hard at making all the characters for their scenes today was all about using the animation skills they had learnt throughout the five week course.

Today was run a bit different and for the best, instead of all 12 at once I had one group at a time for 20-25 minutes in which time they had to animate and narrate their clip.

Below is the end result I hope you enjoy it, they were a great bunch of students to work with and they learnt, applied and achieved so much.

I love the fact that when we the student where making Scene three the student realised to make a good fire he needed to make multiple drawing of fires “like what we did with the panels on the robot, we will have to keep swapping them out”.

I love the fact that they were so confident in animating they even added little touches in the background look out for a rabbit in the forest, a mouse on the fire place, look out for the axe being raised as the wolf is chased.

I love the fact that while we were animating one of the boys parents came in to see him complete the work and told me “this is all he has been on about, these lessons, he tells me how different cartoons are made, he loves it, he has been showing everyone in family the other video helped make on the internet”.

How we did it. The course took place over five weeks.

Week one was Silhouette animation and cut out animation we looked at works by Lotte Reigner and watched Charlie and Lola respectively. We also animated a cut-out robot and built a Thaumatrope.

Week two was stop-frame animation we looked at Shaun the Sheep, Trap Door, Morph, Bob the Builder we also made egg box characters and animated them.

Week three was cel-frame animation we looked at Phineas and Ferb, compared first series Spongebob Sqaurepants (cel-frame) to later series 6 (cel shaded animation), we also made Zoetropes.

Week four we planned out the scenes for Red Riding Hood and made all the characters in the cut-out style and stored them together.

Week five we animated and narrated.

I then took all the footage and audio home and edited it and shazam! A masterpiece. It was a great project and I look forward to running simiar workshops with other schools in the future. Be sure to follow me on twitter @pixelh8

Today was the last session for group 2; they were a group of 12 year 3′s (7 year olds), six boys and six girls.

They did really well, in five sessions (approx 10 hours total) they were able to take a game from concept to complete game. 12 games in total were made.

I got there early today and had the completed games loaded up on the computers ready for them to play. It was wonderful to see them come in the room to discover their game had been compiled and was ready to play on. I let them play on the games that eachother had made and it was really good to hear them compliment one another on their work.

They were a wonderful group, it is still hard to believe they were seven when you think about how much they achieved (sketching the concept, writing the story, drawing the graphics, doing the level design, designing the box and even a short instruction manual).

It was nice to see that when I asked them who wanted to go on to make games as a job 8 out of 12 raise their hands, 5 boys and 3 girls which is fantastic. Five weeks a go they never thought they could even make a game and now their games will be presented to them in an achievement assembly in front of the whole school.

I am not sure of the exact numbers I’ll have to check it but I think I have now taught around 600 hundred kids to make games, by this estimate and by the time I get to Games Brittania in July I will be teaching my 1000th game designer! Be sure to check out the website as I will be running courses for both teachers and students to get involved in making games.

Today was the start of the students making their adaptation of “Little Red Riding Hood”. Some people may find it infuriating, but I found it amusing to find out that a huge change had been made in the way we were to make the animation. Originally as was the plan last week we were going to make 3D models of characters like we did in Week 2, however somewhere a long the line everyone had decided to change to cut-out animation and they did a fantastic job. (See picture)

Each group of students were given one of the four main scenes that makes up “Little red Riding Hood” to animate 1) Little Red Riding Hood leaving home, 2) Meeting the wolf, 3) Getting to the Grandothers House and 4) The Woodcutter scaring away the Wolf. I gave each group an image of the scene they were working on to remind them. Each individual student had a specific job, i.e. the background, making a wolf, or furniture in a scene. All the jobs were put on a list so everyone knew exactly what they were doing at every step and I could check their progress over the session.

They did it all, an impressive feat for a group of seven year olds (an impressive feat for any age), they made four scenes and all the objects that go in them ready to animate next week! Some really good work and I can’t wait to help them bring it to life. Next week it is all hands on deck as they need to both animate and narrate. I know they can do it, I just want them to be able to take their time, enjoy it and make work that they are proud of.