ESUMA / 7th Gen Character Design+

The Skins team is back in Akulivik for another round of 7th Gen Character Design++ workshops in collaboration with ESUMA! Working alongside United for Literacy as part of their summer camps, we worked with the youth to teach them the basics of animation and creating digital art on iPads.

The first week of our workshop was dedicated to drawing and getting the participants into the creative mindset. We started out with traditional mediums, allowing the kids to have fun and explore their ideas on paper. Once everyone was feeling inspired, we moved to the iPads to learn how to draw on a digital canvas. By the end of the first week, all the participants worked together to fill a few large canvases with all their drawings.

We switched it up for the second week, focusing on the many mediums of animation. The workshops started off teaching the basics of stop motion to help the participants understand the concept of frames. The participants created their own models out of clay and learned how to move them around between pictures to create a short animation. During the last few sessions, the beluga hunting season was wrapping up, so we celebrated by creating articulate paper puppets of sea creatures. The participants learned how to attach pieces of paper with butterfly clips to allow their drawings to move around and come alive with puppeteering. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to return to Akulivik and continue our workshops! The skins team has a blast working with the community and hope to return again soon!