Shorty after I finished working on Strawberry Thief, I took part in an event for the V&A Museum of Childhood and The London Design Festival. I want to talk a little bit about the events of the day, as there was lots of exciting things going on.
Near the entrance to the museum, there was a mini gallery showing beautiful pieces of work from games like Monument Valley and Moshi Monsters. We wanted to showcase examples of sketches and works in progress, rather than finished pieces like posters and advertisements.
Children who visited the museum also got the opportunity to do some 3D printing, and could create their own characters on cups – in the style of Rex Crowle, who was the creative lead on the Tearaway game for PSVita.
I spent the day in the classrooms of the museum running workshops for 5-7 year olds. In the early discussions of the event, it was decided that we wanted to do a workshop that links to the museum where children also get to make their own interactive pieces. Thinking of a way for such young children to do a bit of coding worried me at first, but after a bit of research, I found an amazing iPad App called ScratchJr which allows children to draw characters that they can programme to move around and even control.
I spent the day in the classrooms of the museum running workshops for 5-7 year olds. In the early discussions of the event, it was decided that we wanted to do a workshop that links to the museum where children also get to make their own interactive pieces. Thinking of a way for such young children to do a bit of coding worried me at first, but after a bit of research, I found an amazing iPad App called ScratchJr which allows children to draw characters that they can programme to move around and even control.
I asked for an assortment of museum objects to act as inspiration for the children. I then took them through how to create characters and backgrounds and get them to move and interact on screen. I showed off a simple example of tapping on a girl, which moves her, and kicks a football on collision. The programming aspect of the app works really well, as it is very visual with each behaviour acting as a piece of a jigsaw. This seemed to make the children more experimental with the program, trying lots of different options.
