Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
I was in teacher mode for the second time in a month. This time, I was in Orange County to a room of 30 or so kids ranging from 6 to middle school. Why not show them that custom figures can be art? From the first time out teaching, I learned that there’ll be one who can’t get a start. How do you overcome this? I asked her some question and get negative answers. “No, I can’t do that, no I don’t like that.” My trick was to get her holding a pen. I told her to start by writing her name on the bottom and coloring the base of the figure a solid color. Next thing I knew, she was off to the races. Of course at the end, I said, “good job, it came out fine.” And she said, “no, it’s not.” But I came back with, “I think so” and split out before she could reply negatively. The styles ranged from coloring clean to abstract assembly – most of the works was in a style that I couldn’t fathom. Somehow this project was green lit and disguised as part of a “career day.” Yes, someone or a few among this bunch will go on and do art and maybe they’ll remember custom figures too.
I think the figure below has the cutest cat face ever. Who taught this kid how to do the eyes like this? …and green nose? Love it. I could go on about the goodnesses of each piece. There’s something in all of them that I like. Well, most of them, even from the one who couldn’t get a start.
Thanks Kizuna, DKE, OCBC and JANM.
Tons of kids, each with a custom figure.
See how tiny the girl in orange with the pink glasses is? She’s 6 and did a great job with her figure.
Kizuna is a small organization in Southern California. They run a summer camp among other things. They haven’t had an art program before, so today was the day. It’s spring break for some youngsters and custom figures sounded like the right call. With the help of JANM for the supplies and DKE (Dov) for a significant break on the figures, a fun program was born for nearly no budget which is how tight an event like this will run. I showed some slides of figures to spark some imaginations, and off the kids went. Of course at the end, the boys did battle with their figures which had jetpacks and missiles. I’ll be doing this one more time.
