Yes! That’s exactly what it is. The third phase of our very first Drawing Animation Sound (“D.A.S”) project has now come to a close. For this round, CRE8 headed to the hills of Taganga, Colombia to work with music producer Juan Pellegrino of the band Systema Solar and home of  InterMundos.org, and a fantastic (and pleasantly noisy) group of locals who attend the school in the area.  The Band of Juan is known for an eclectic mix of traditional Colombian sounds and a a great example of combining the local culture with a global vision.

To get a feeling for the Colombian carribean coast and the music of Systema Solar check out their video:

We began by showing the kids the animated sequences created by kids in Los Angles who used the drawings created by kids in Thailand. The kids of Colombia soon understood that it was now their turn to give life to the film by creating the sound for the story!

The kids were a bit shy at first, but after conducting a group “sound hunt”– during which we searched for musical objects in our surrounding environment–the kids soon transformed before our eyes into an outstanding group of musical performers. Looking at printed out pictures that represent parts of the animated sequences the kids were exploring the environment for possible sources of inspiration.

While recording each sound, the importance for silence opened the doors for valuable lessons in patience and respect. And teamwork was always in the forefront, especially when the whole group worked together to rapidly move a big piece of tin roof to produce the sound of a roaring engine of a spaceship!

A warm and special thank you to all the kids of Taganga and all the collaborators who made the event possible. Much appreciation goes to Juan for conducting and producing the event, Andres Gutierrez with technical recording, Venessa Gocksch for hosting and directing , and Carolina Pellegrino for technical advice and team support.

Now our D.A.S. post-production begins. We’ll report back soon when the film is complete. For now, please enjoy our photos of our noisy visit with the kids of Colombia!

In Berlin, Summer 2009, we announced our first intergalactic drawing contest with two simple instructions:

1. draw an alien

2. the most realistic one wins

The idea behind this contest is to challenge people to shed preconceived notions and explore this apparent paradox. Can “realistic” and “alien-ness” co-exist?

All ages were invited to participate. Since the original launch in Berlin, the contest, in true intergalactic fashion, has traveled to three cities, two continents, and one prominent gallery in Muenster, Germany, the DST Gallery. Next stop: the famous Mars Modern.

At this stage, more than 500 entries have been submitted. We plan to continue collecting entries on an ongoing basis to explore this idea transculturally. Of course, no one has the final authority on what an alien looks like. The contest is intentionally absurd. We implicitly suggest discarding mental judgement and trusting imagination instead.

At a yet undetermined date, the extraterrestrial jury will declare the contest over, stage a final exhibition and pick a winner. We haven’t seen the other entries yet but have received assurances that Earthlings are doing quite well. Keep up the good work!

We work with filmmakers everywhere to make short digital videos that allow kid to creatively communicate with one another from different corners of the world. These fun, informative videos allow viewers to experience different cultures around the world with the curiosity of a child. Watch our first video and let Ali and Oinak of India be your guides as they share with you their answer to a question from Tanja of Germany: “What kind of animals do you live with?” After a tour of their village to provide the answers, Ali and Oinak end their video by asking their own questions of others kids. And so the dialogue continues…

Our goal with our Question and Answer Videos is to inspire filmmakers everywhere to use their talents to help kids around the world have an enjoyable, engaging, and educational conversation with one another. Whether it’s connecting individual kids or large groups, the videos can be watched by millions at a time and help kids everywhere discover their substantive common ground and develop mutual understanding, respect, and appreciation for their meaningful differences. Contact us today and learn how you can help.

Get out at the last metro station, follow the stony path that leads into the mountains of Barcelona, and hear the murmurs of the city slowly vanish away. Welcome to the valley of Can Masdeu.

As a part of my internship with CRE8 in Barcelona, this weekend photographer Luis Montero and I visited the residence and community garden in the Collserola Park on the outskirts of Barcelona to conduct a Most Realistic Alien drawing workshop with the locals of Catalonia. On this sunny, wintery Sunday, the social centre of the residence know as the Punt d’Interracció de Collserola (or “PIC”) opened its doors to offer music therapy and auto hypnosis, and of course…to let some Realistic Aliens in!

The children and parents of Can Masdeu welcomed the CRE8 team with an energetic Sunday morning dance and then started the day of collaborative creation with an imaginary journey through space. The kids were quickly inspired to use their colored pencils and paper to capture the fantastic things they encountered along the way (in the most realistic way possible, of course). Beautiful freezing, bubbling and sparkling aliens emerged out of all kinds of colors and forms. Throughout the day, more and more aliens found their way from the galaxy of imagination to our workshop table as the intergalactic exposition grew bigger and bigger.

After having a healthy lunch in the sunny mountain garden, it was time for some “sportier” activities. Well, artistically sporty at least. CRE8 engaged the visitors of PIC with a friendly match of Ping-Pong Painting, CRE8′s collaborative drawing workshop. Four teams of kids and adults worked together with a growing creative passion that made them forget the time. After one and a half hours, the match was finally over, and all participants were left surprised and delighted about their spontaneous manifestation of artistic sportiness.

Thanks to all who helped CRE8 bring our workshops to the Catalonia community. We look forward to sharing your Aliens with the rest of the world as The Most Realistic Alien drawing workshop continues its very realistic journey around Earth. Thank you Catalonia!

Drawing Animation Sound project, “D.A.S.” for short, connects kids from far off corners of the world—Thailand, the U.S.A and Colombia—to work together with our help to create a truly one-of-a-kind animated film. Here is a sneak peak at phase 1: Drawing. Enjoy!

So we packed up the drawings from Thailand and sent them off to sunny Los Angles, California where CRE8 friend and filmmaker, Joshua Ballinger, worked with the awesome students from Marine View Middle School in Huntington Beach, California. With help of Lily Sellig, Marine View’s fantastic art teacher who made CRE8′s visit possible, Josh taught the students the basics of stop motion animation and storytelling and helped the kids transform the drawings of outrageous characters, accessories, and backgrounds into short animated sequences that will soon become a cinematic masterpiece.

The students brought a lot of enthusiasm to the project. They were interested to know everything about the process, and were full of questions about the kids in Thailand and Colombia, where the soundtrack will be recorded. You could almost feel their world getting smaller as the students learned about creative kids just like them below the equator and all the way on the other side of the world.

When it came time to open the box of drawings from Thailand, their eyes lit up. Like kids on Christmas, they all started going through the pictures one-by-one, laying them out for all to see. They picked their favorites, started cutting them out, and created stick puppets to use as characters and hung the backgrounds for the various “scenes” of the movie.

In addition to teaching the students about Thai and Colombian culture, Joshua encouraged the kids to contribute to the film in a way that was representative of local American culture and of them as individuals. All the students were eager to include two themes that are near and dear to their hearts: the beach and surfing!

The students had a strong grasp on technology, and Joshua helped them utilize their technical talents to further their individual self-expression. The story was crafted one scene at a time using spaceship wrecks, visitors from outer space, and the occasional tidal waves (for surfing). At the end of the workshop, the students had so much fun they even suggested Skyping with their new creative collaborators in Thailand (something that’s in the works for the premier of the film!).

Now it’s off to Colombia for Phase III: the Soundtrack. Viva la DAS!

- You draw a line on paper, I draw the next
- You write the beginning of a story, I provide the ending
- You film a sequence, I record the soundtrack

In this way, creativity can easily travel from one person to another—whether the participants are sitting on either side of a table, or on either side of the world. The end result is a collaborative work of art, jointly created, that captures multiple ways of perceiving the world. All of our projects are inspired by the ping-pong concept, and many of our project workshops include sessions in which kids jointly create Ping Pong Paintings to better understand the power of collaborative creativity.

If you guessed CRE8’s The Most Realistic Alien drawing workshop, you guessed right!

First in Europe, then Australia, now in South America, our Realistic Aliens continue to enjoy their worldwide tour of planet Earth. Just yesterday, CRE8 team member, Sofia Cabo, CRE8 friend and volunteer, Sergio Andres Castro, and photographer Gustavo Osorio visited a lively group of kids in Bogota, Colombia, at the Fundacion Coprogreso—a child-care center just north of the city in the beautiful foothills of the Andes Mountains.

It was a rainy day, but it didn’t matter…it was time to draw! The workshop began with what we like to call “ping pong”: our collaborative drawing exercise that allows the kids to work with partners to draw single works of art (“ping pong paintings”, as we like to call them). Afterwards, we worked as a group to transform specific drawings into entirely new works of art by adding only a few new lines and shapes. This exercise revealed to the kids that although one person may see something a certain way, another person might see it quite differently. Each perspective is unique and infinitely valuable.

Then came the aliens! With their creative juices flowing, the kids pushed the limits of their imaginations, grabbed their pencils and paper, and drew the most realistic aliens they could. All sorts of new aliens soon touched down. The boys gravitated towards delightfully scary-monster-type aliens (including fire swords and lightning bolts), while the girls stuck to sweeter looking aliens with many eyes and long, beautiful eyelashes. These aliens were unlike any we have seen before, and each was VERY realistic (well, realistic somewhere in the universe at least).

The day ended with drinks, cake, and a whole lot of jumping around. We attributed the energy surge to the power and wonder of collaborative art. But it could have been the sugar. Either way, we had a blast in Bogota!

If you would like to bring CRE8’s The Most Realistic Alien drawing workshop to your local community, contact us by clicking that little green “Contact” thing on the left of your screen. Let’s create!

CRE8 owes a great deal of gratitude to Lek Yomkwang –a local Thai artist, translator, CRE8 volunteer, and all around wonderful person–for helping make our days with the kids such a great success.  Through her previous experience working at youth camps in Thailand, Lek was able to fully engage the kids with fun interactive games and ice-breaking activities that enabled Ole and the rest of the CRE8 team to more completely communicate some  of the more complex ideas surrounding the creation of abstract art.  Before the drawing began, we asked the kids to set aside their traditional ideas of art and follow their creative intuition.  We encouraged them to try to think about things in a different way, to trust their pencil and draw from their hearts.  To get the creative juices flowing, Ole asked the room:

“What if instead of houses, the characters you create live in balloons? …. What if instead of cars that drive on the streets, the streets drive on the cars?”

After listening to Lek’s Thai translation, the kids’ eyes lit-up and “Oo’s” and “Ah’s” filled the room as the kids’ imaginations began to realize all the possibilities.  Hours later, when the workshop ended, it was hard to believe how many drawings had been completed !

After our time at the school, Thaillywood—the local artist residency and CRE8’s partner organization here in Nongplalai—opened its doors to the kids for a post-workshop pool-party celebration ! After enjoying a pizza lunch and a tour of the house that allowed Ole to show the kids the art that he has been working on while in Thailand, the kids went right for the pool for some outdoor fun and a much-needed break from the heat. Later, as the day came to a close, the kids gathered in the house art gallery where Marie, the host and founder of the Thaillywood Artist Residency, presented each of the kids with a sketchbook and colored pencil set—a gift that Thaillywood and CRE8 hopes will encourage the kids to further explore the lessons they’ve learned and continue expressing their own individual creativity. We can’t thank these kids enough; they produced such great artwork during our time together and were so fun to work with !

Kids at the studio of Ole Ukena at Thaillywood artist residency

Also, with the help of Los Angeles filmmaker Josh Ballinger, CRE8 is filming the entire D.A.S. process in order to create a documentary film about the experience.  Once it’s completed, we intend to share the film far and wide in hopes that it will encourage the formation of future D.A.S. projects and simply reveal to others the amazing potential that lies in any type of  cross-cultural creative collaboration.  We’re working on a teaser for the film now, and it should be up shortly !

In the coming months, the CRE8 team will begin working with kids in Germany and Spain to add ANIMATION and—you guessed it—a SOUNDTRACK to all these fabulous original drawings.  We hope for this to be just the first of many D.A.S projects to come. With anticipation, CRE8 has already begun planning for stops in Colombia, Bali, and Los Angeles. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as all the intercultural collaboration continues. For now, please enjoy all the photos from Phase 1 – Thailand !

First set of handdrawn character that will later become animated

Interview about the process

A successful collaboration

Circling up for a ping pong painting

And rather than be overly concerned with various techniques to draw more “beautifully” or more “realistically”, we focused more on encouraging the kids to embrace the beauty of uncertainty within the creative process.
The workshop began with a collaborative drawing session where two or more students took turns working

You draw a line, then I draw one; you, then me again...

both realistically and in the abstract. First, on one side of a piece of paper, each student was asked to draw a traditional portrait of his or her partner, as realistically as possible.  Next, on the other side of the paper, we asked the students to again do the same thing, but this time a bit differently…with their eyes closed !  With one hand firmly over their eyes and the other free to draw, the students did their best to capture the image of their partners that remained faintly etched in their minds. Each student tentatively explored this new and unorthodox method, giggling all the while.  Despite the students’ best efforts (and much to their surprise), their two drawings always looked wildly different.  That’s the beauty of it !  As the kids viewed their two drawings with wonder and amazement, the room quickly filled with energy and excitement.

Eagerly, we tried to gauge their emotions about the experience: “How was the second process different? How did it feel? Which style was more exciting, which was scarier, which was more fun…?”

Believe it or not, almost all the kids preferred drawing with their eyes closed !  As artists, we know how exhilarating and liberating it can feel to be released from the confines of conformity, from traditional styles and the “normal” ways of doing things.  The kids fully (and, well, blindly) committed themselves to the creative process, and—just as we suspected—were thrilled with their results !   This was the beginning of trusting uncertainty, of seeing art not just as something that needs technical skill, but also as a pursuit that begs for the courage to take risks, a worthwhile endeavor that requires an ability and willingness to explore the unknown.  The students did a fantastic job, and we are already looking forward to the upcoming workshops that we plan to hold here in June.

Displaying the day's work

In the coming weeks, we plan to conduct a second workshop with the kids of Nong Get Jai that will mark the first of three phases of our very first Drawing /// Animation /// Sound collaboration project, or “D.A.S.” as we like to say for short.  After our drawing workshops with the kids here in Nongplalai, Thailand comes to a close, the CRE8 team will hit the road again and soon begin working with kids in Germany and Spain who will use these drawings to create a truly one-of-a-kind animated movie and a soundtrack to go along with it !  We are confident that the film will be nothing less than spectacular, and we look forward to sharing it with all of the kids as well as the larger CRE8 network when it’s completed! For now, please enjoy the pictures from our drawing workshop with the kids here at Nong Get Jai !

The laughter is big when the final works are displayed

Now who is who ?