McMath Grade 11 student Andrew Tong is hoping to energize, and digitize, students across the Richmond School District with his new animation workshop.
“It’s a skill that isn’t easily trained and it is vital for the kids to learn in the future,” said Tong.
Animation, explained Tong, is a way to bring inanimate objects to life on a computer or television screen.
“It’s putting your vision into a computer screen, making something that’s not living and bringing it to life by materializing that vision,” said Tong.
Every Wednesday, for the past month, Tong has been teaching about a dozen students after school at Blundell elementary.
“It's a delight to have Andrew come and teach the students at Blundell how to animate. He is organized, enthusiastic and an inspiration and it's really exciting to be a part of his project,” said Blundell principal, Ms. Maria Medic.
Tong’s five-week seminar with the Blundell students emphasizes and helps develop skills such as spatial thinking, creativity and problem solving, in addition to the obvious computer skills.
At the end of the seminar, Tong holds an open house for parents who can see what their children created on the animation program Alice Three.
“The open house summarizes everything the kids have done and it makes them feel good. They’ve learned how to import characters, move them around and so on,” explained Tong, who added that games such as Minecraft have exploded in popularity and inspired kids to learn more about computers.
Tong said while most adult animators are men, his program is split evenly among boys and girls.
“There’s a misconception that computers, animation and programming is for boys. For what reason, I don’t know; it’s just the norm that developed. But, it’s definitely not true, anyone can animate,” he said.
The young upstart said he started to learn how to animate on his own at age 12. Over the course of his solo journey, he learned practical life skills, in particular, problem solving.
“In animating you have to bog down and work on your own. It’s helped me with other stuff in school, like taking tests. I’ve developed a better work ethic and with group assignments I’ve become more open and capabale of taking criticism,” said Tong.
