They're attending a Monday-Friday afternoon session at the Southwest Branch of Seattle Public libraries with singer songwriter animator Morgan Taylor of Gustafer Yellowgold fame.
The group of kids (about 20, from ages 7-12) are working on original characters and songs. Their main character is a squirrel named Christopher Acorn. He's storing nuts, but the stash goes missing. That's what the song below is about.
She's off camera (thanks, CJ! ;) ) but Annabelle is playing the electronic sounding instrument (specifically, a stylophone, a miniature electronic synthesizer invented in 1967, per Wikipedia).
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Blf1X8o6Xkk?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
https://youtu.be/Blf1X8o6Xkk
Here's what the kids have to say about the camp so far, Annabelle first:
Starting on July 27, 2015 I started a 5-day summer camp called “Build a cartoon and musical world”, taught by Morgan Taylor, the singer-songwriter/artist for the “Gustafer Yellowgold” series. The camp included plenty of other kids, even though I didn’t count the actual number. The summer camp started with making a character and a song. Our first song was titled “Pig Up!” and was about standing up for yourself. The character we ended up making was “Christopher Acorn”, a squirrel.
The story we settled on for Christopher was that he had his acorn stash stolen, so he goes on an adventure to find out who stole them. First he goes to a hawk, who tells Christopher it was the fox. In the end, the culprit turns out to be his sister all along. The camp has been fun so far and I can’t wait to finish our story.
And here's what CJ has to say ...
On July 27th, we started going to a daily camp from 3:30 P.M. to 5:30 P.M, which will last until July 31st, in the Southwest branch of Seattle Public Libraries run by Morgan Taylor, the artist and musician behind the Gustafer Yellowgold music videos. Morgan Taylor has played Gustafer Yellowgold shows all across the nation, including one we went to in Magnolia a while back. At camp, our goal is to create a story, drawings, and songs to represent our character and their adventures.
In class, the character we created was Christopher Acorn, a squirrel who lives in a stump and wishes to be a pig (as bizarre as it may sound). So far, songs we have written include "Pig Up", a song that goes into more detail about Christopher's desire to be a pig, "R.O.D.E.N.T", or "Rodent-Operated Daring Elementary Nut Training", which is both the name of Christopher's school and its anthem, and "Calvin", which tells a story about Calvin, a brown-feathered hawk who steals Christopher's acorns.
Recently, we each drew three-panel comics about something that happens to Christopher, beginning with the words "I woke up this morning and I could not believe my eyes.." Examples of different comics we drew included a scenario where Christopher wakes up to find that somebody has made him breakfast in bed, and one where he discovers that R.O.D.E.N.T's Nutball team has won in the regional competition.
So far, I've had fun in Morgan's class and wish to be able to see him again.
They each worked on some cartoons yesterday, too. Everyone was challenged to start with the thought "This morning I woke up and I could not believe my eyes ... "
Here's CJ's panel
MORNING ROUNDS: This morning's dog walking destination was Discovery Park. We didn't head for the beach, though. Rather, we explored a couple of interior loops. The first was Wolf Tree Trail, a new-to-us-one. Basically, it's paths through swampy areas. I was instantly regretting the fact we forgot bug spray.
Anyway, neat plants to be seen in the swampy area, including these with Jurassic Park sized leaves.
We also did the loop around the beaver pond, except there wasn't a sign of any recent beaver activity now, and no ducks were about, either. The pond looked super stagnant. Annabelle likened it to a golf course green.
Camp sounds like fun.
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