DragonFly Landed!!!

Big Idea: DragonFly will be showcasing some DesignIT teens on their show and guest are able to meet the stars of the show.

Time: April 22, 2006, Saturday from 11am-2pm

Participants: About 10 ALA teens, 1 Northside Boys & Girls teen, Floor Staffs, and DesignIT coaches.

Activity: The day for DragonFly has come! Today was a day for visitors to interact with the stars of DragonFly and DesignIT teens, who has a clip in the show. DesignIT Studios volunteer to bring back Spin Art Tables and Chain Reactions. Live Animal Biologist, Lucy, displayed animals and brochures for visitors to explore. And the DragonFly table was handing out magnifying glasses and other cool items for everyone to enjoy. Visitors seem to be having fun and was interacting with the DragonFly girls and DesignIT teens. At the Chain Reaction section, the DesignIT teens set off the first practice countdown before the big finally. The next set up more visitors became involved with the teens and built there own design. When it was finally time to start the chain reaction Dynamo, the museum dinosaur, brought other visitors to help countdown and cheer the young builders on.

Best Part: Watching kids who are not acquainted with each other interact together to build a stronger chain reaction.

Worst Part: None.

Pictures...

Jade and Madison demonstrating how Spin Art works.

Lucy talks about varies animals.

Ashley and Brandi signed autographs.

Wesley started the first chain reaction.

Armondo's chain reaction lost its balance.

Guest asking Cooper questions on crickets.

Guest helps rebuild.

"I'm going to make it taller than me!"

Dynamo leads guest to see the final chain reaction run for the day.

We're at Claymation Station, and the Train is Leaving!! Hop Onboard!!
Week Five and Six


Big Idea: To create an 18 cell (three page) storyboard illustrating the stop motion animation film created in week four. One this task has been completed, and new storyboard for their week six film is to be drawn and approved before filming can begin.

Dates: April 24 through 28

Daniel sculpts his characters from clay.

The hands of an artist




Lauren and Rebecca form their cast.

An Overview of the Week 4 Animation Progression

Big Idea: To masterfully produce a 30 second film including music, dialogue or voice, and starring not only the same character elements (popsicle sick, straw, pipe cleaner, and single lego piece of their choosing), but also a COMPLETELY new character creation!! This character could be, but is not limited to, being birthed from clay.

Dates: April 10th thru the 14th

Groups Participating: Bluedot and Pico ALA students, Jonathon, Crystal and Sammie

Materials: Laptops, power cords, popsicle sticks, straws, pipe cleaners, various lego pieces, package of crayola polychrome modeling clay, quaint resealable storage containers

Associated Concepts: Storytelling-Theme, character, and plot development. Stop motion animation techniques with fluid motion movement and sound effects. New creative freedom is bequeathed upon the picos from their bluedot mentors this week, as they are allowed to explore new effects. Time management is a key concept we hope to see the Bluedots master and enforce.

Best Part: Creativity is streaming from their minds straight to the screen!! What began as a simple exercise in filming techniques using a popsicle stick, straw and pipe cleaner, has now progressed into a thirty second musical jewel starring lego pieces and clay figures. From troll staff surfing snowmen to cowboy lego men braving the mighty seas upon disgruntled marine monsters, the characters are diverse and interesting. Students have created evolving stories that have branched past the basic fighting scenes, and given the viewers a chance to see the events leading up to the quarrel. With each week, they are exploring new ways to enrich their scenes. For example, with the addition of text boxes, students are able to present title scenes at the beginning as well as subtitles throughout the film. They have also constructed backgrounds and props such as trees that interact with the characters.

Worst Part: Due to the limited number of available outlets in the room, groups are corralling around one table. At times, many cords are fanning off of the table, making it hard to navigate through a sea of cords. We have encouraged them to spread out, but they seem to be too engrossed in their projects to worry about personal space. :)

Improvements: YEA organization!!! All groups are now assigned their very own computer. Therefore, groups are able to work on their projects any time they choose to do so. They have all scheduled when they are working, so that proper supplies are made available. They are saving their work in Animation Projects 2006 folders on the desktop for easy access.

Tentative Scheduale for Panther's Art Cycle

Just to fill everyone in, this is what we've been up to out there, and where we're going. So far its been great and both the teens and I have learned alot, and I'll be blogging about each activity individually very shortly...

Panther's Art Cycle

Monday, March 27th
Art interpretation Activity:
Interactive exploration of slides of various works of art and what they make us feel and what they may mean.

Wednesday, March 29th & Monday, April 3rd
Spin Art machines:
Using crickets and motors to build rotating palettes to create “spin art” using various mediums (markers, pencils, paint, etc.)

Wednesday, April 5th
Museum Tour & Art Questionnaire:
Visiting places in the museum the public never sees where our museum artists create and store exhibits, including the Wood Shop, The Exhibits Shop and The Collection Library. Then exploring the exhibits and identifying each installation's medium (sculpture, painting, photograph, or computer generated art).

Monday, April 10th & Wednesday, April 12th
Shadow Painting:
Building sculptures from light woods and hot glue and using their shadows to create images.

Monday, April 17th & Wednesday, April 19th
Robo-Art (cricket powered):
Building sturdy, durable 3 and 5 legged robots running on crickets and lego motors that create spiral and scribble art

Monday, April 24th & Wednesday, April 26th
Art Story Telling:
Begining with a field trip to Modern to photograph art, we then arrange our images to tell a story of our own and present to the group to guess the story it portreys.

Monday, May 1st & Wednesday, May 3rd
L.E.D. Art:
Using L.E.D.’s to create various sculptures and works of art, including the never done L.E.D. “Throwies”, where L.E.D.’s are attached to magnets to create magnetic night lights, where when thrown together create a 3 week glowing collaborative work of art.

Monday, May 8th
TCU Art Department Field Trip:
Take a tour of the TCU sculpture lab, photo lab, and painting department, and perhaps bring some of our pieces to show professors and students.

Wednesday, May 10th
2nd Annual Panther Boys & Girls Club Gallery Night (Culminating Event):
Display one or two of the best pieces created during our art cycle and open it to the public.

Countdown to Dragonfly TV Show!

Big Idea: Dragon Fly is on the flight back to the museum, so a couple of the teens from ALA wanted to prepare for the big day.

Time: Saturday, April 8, 2006

Participants: Sammie, Augie, Eddie, and Rebecca.

Materials: K'nex, legos, marbles, and lots of blocks.

Activity: Since Dragon Fly is coming back to the museum in about two weeks, a couple of the teens felt the need to prepare for the television show. Although, dragon Fly is not focusing on DesignIT Studios, they have asked that we put on a little display in front of the cameras. Some activities that the DesignIT teens will be showcasing are: Spin Art and Chain Reactions. For this open studio day, they decided to work on some models for the Chain Reaction. For the teens, it was interesting for them to see the reknown artist, Augie N'Kele, struggle keeping the blocks steady. By the end of the workshop, the teens help Augie with his blocks, ready for the final countdown. In the picture above, Eddie is building the ramp that will hopefully be set off by a balloon.

Best Part: The two teens that showed up for extra hours had just finish testing for school and still showed up prepared to work.

Worst Part: The blocks were not steady enough and can easily be triggered by anything.

Rebecca tying the string to give her swing a more fluent flow.

Augie concentrates on making the k'nex stay together.

Sammie adds the last k'nex piece the ferris wheel.

Augie and the fallen blocks...

Rebecca's organic styling with the blocks...

The tower hovers over the diamond for a dramatic fall...

Eddie makes is bridge steady by clamping it to the table.

The final picture before the countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

Coffee, Music, and More...

The Big Idea: Starbucks invited Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and DesignIT Studios to come show some of the fun stuff that we do in the museum.



Time: Thursday, April 6, 2006

Place: New Starbucks Coffee Shop on 7th Street.

Participants: Jonathon, Sammie, Judy, Carol, and lots of coffee drinking people.

Activity: Jonathon and I had a blast with the guest that came into Starbucks. At some point Jonathon and I were having more fun than the guest, but no worries here, we never leave people unsatisfied playing with Melon Harp and Coffee Therom. As seen in Jonathon's picture above, sometimes we learn new things that completely takes our full concentration. Kudos to all of the Starbucks staff for letting us come play in their new store and the people that stop by our table. They made the hours fly by so fast! We didn't realize that it was already time for us to go.

Best Part: The looks on the kids faces when they made music come from two forks.

Worst Part: Unfortunately, the crickets and midi died on us a couple of times.

More fun pictures...