Cyber Jams

Step 1 – Description

Very special Cyber Jam on 9/17!

We are very proud of our Student National Mentors and Fellows, many of whom stay active in our Youth Digital Arts community even after graduating from college.  This special Cyber Jam features the return of at least three of our Student National Fellows to share how Youth Digital Arts gave them skills that they continue using for work, fun and as entrepreneurs.  Jenna, for example, will share how she uses her art skills as a graduate student in avian biology, with a focus on population genetics and conservation.

Our current SNMs and SNMFs are super excited to jam with our returning alumni and share the amazing projects they’re working on.  Max will demonstrate the original video game students create in our new IMVGD101 course, Internet and Mobile Video Game Design.  What’s super cool is that all attendees will be able to play the game at the same time on their phones and computers.  Kierstin just completed our new 3DDRW101 course in which students create the super cool 3D artwork shown above.  Max and Kierstin worked all summer on our new courses and are excited to share what they learned.

We are also excited for Amelie’s first Cyber Jam.  Am is a talented young sixth grade artist from Pennsylvania and our newest SNM!

Come jam with us and watch the sparks fly across the internet!

Step 2 – Enter Your Registration Information in the form below and then click the Buy Now button below the form if you are paying by credit card.  If your school is paying by PO just enter your registration information and have your school email the PO to us.

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Please use our Contact Us form if you have any questions.

Step 1 – Description

Digital drawing, painting, animation and video game design are amazing and fun art forms.  Our students create fantastic professional level digital art and you may wonder how they do it?  Practice, have fun and more practice!  Creating digital art is easier for most people than drawing on paper or painting on canvas but there are skills that need to be explored, practiced, tinkered with and mastered.

Our Student National Mentors and Student National Fellows draw, paint, animate and create video games constantly.  Why?  Because they love it and they inspire each other with their different skills and techniques in our Cyber Studios and during our Cyber Jams.  We distill their best practices and our research to teach new Youth Digital Arts students.  During our Cyber Jams you will be introduced to 2D drawing, painting, animation and video game design, as well as 3D modelling, animation and video game design.  Most of the professional software programs we demonstrate are FREE for you to download and try yourselves!

Our Cyber Jams are fluid so where we go depends on your questions and the art works our students demonstrate.  You can watch, listen and ask questions as they demonstrate their techniques causing digital art sparks to fly around the country with an idea in California sparking other ideas in Michigan or South Carolina.  You can even create some sparks by demonstrating your own digital art and techniques!

Our SNMs are kids who love art but also have fun practicing and mastering their digital art forms.  Many SNMs have their own online stores, have sold their artworks, went on to excel in University digital art programs, even as freshmen in high school, and have been hired by companies like Nickelodeon’s Digital Animation Studios and Sony Playstation!  You can view Student National Mentor art at www.YouthDigitalArts.com by clicking Blog in the menu.

Join us as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours.

Students who enroll in our Digital Manga and Comics Cyber Studio, the last course in our Digital Drawing and Painting course series, can continue asking questions and working with our Student National Mentors and Fellows after the Cyber Jams.

Step 2 – Enter Your Registration Information in the form below and then click the Buy Now button below the form if you are paying by credit card.  If your school is paying by PO just enter your registration information and have your school email the PO to us.

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Please use our Contact Us form if you have any questions.

Step 1 – Description

We are very excited to invite everyone to jam with HJ during our March Cyber Jam.  HJ is a Storyboard artist for Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. Pre-School Show.

HJ has a M.F.A. in Animation from one of the top animation schools in the country: The John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

While completing her Master’s at USC HJ assisted with several classes including: Digital Lighting and Rendering, Writing for Animation, Visual Effects, Introduction to 3-D Character Animation, Storyboarding for Animation, and Introduction to Film Graphics – Animation.  She also worked as an animator for the Tokyo Broadcasting System, an illustrator for a robot development project, an animator for a mobile game company, a book illustrator, and a modeler and animator for a 3D animation company.  HJ has also traveled in 20 countries and has boxed for 3 years.  Yikes!

Please join us for a fun and interactive Cyber Jam with HJ.  This is a rare opportunity to learn what it’s like to work at one of the top companies in the animation industry from a young and talented artist who will share her insights and experience.

Step 2 – Enter Your Registration Information in the form below and then click the Buy Now button below the form if you are paying by credit card.  If your school is paying by PO just enter your registration information and have your school send the PO.

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Please use our Contact Us form if you have any questions.

Step 1 – Description

Digital drawing, painting, animation and video game design are amazing and fun art forms.  Youth Digital Arts students are creating fantastic professional level art and you may wonder how they do it?  Practice, have fun and more practice!  Creating digital art is easier for most people than drawing on paper or painting on canvas but there are skills that need to be explored, practiced, tinkered with and mastered.  Our Student National Mentors and Student National Fellows draw, paint, animate and create video games constantly.  Why?  Because they love it!  They inspire each other with their different skills and techniques in our Cyber Studios and during our Cyber Jams.  We distill their best practices and our research to teach up-and-coming Youth Digital Arts students.  During our Cyber Jams you will be introduced to 2D drawing, painting, animation and video game design, as well as 3D modelling, animation and video game design.  Most of the professional software programs we will demonstrate are FREE for you to download and try yourselves!

Our Cyber Jams are fluid so where we go depends on your questions and the art works our students demonstrate.  You can watch, listen and interact as they demonstrate their techniques causing digital art sparks to fly around the country with an idea in California igniting another in Michigan or South Carolina.  You can join the conversation, ask questions and even demonstrate your own digital art and techniques.

Our SNMs are kids who love art but also have fun practicing and mastering their digital art forms.  Many SNMs have their own online stores, have sold their artworks, have gone onto excel in University digital art programs, even as freshmen in high school, and have been hired by companies like Nickelodeon’s Digital Animation Studios and Sony Playstation!  You can view Student National Mentor art at www.YouthDigitalArts.com by clicking Blog in the menu.

Join us as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours.

Students who enroll in our Digital Manga and Comics Cyber Studio, which is the last course in our Digital Drawing and Painting course series, will be able to continue asking questions of and working with our Student National Mentors and Fellows after the Cyber Jams.

Step 2 – Enter Your Registration Information in the form below and then click the Buy Now button below the form if you are paying by credit card.  If your school is paying by PO just enter your registration information and have your school send the PO.

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee for each webinar by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

Attendees will learn from our fantastic Student National Mentors as they play and demonstrate Minecraft, by popular demand!  Our February Minecraft Cyber Jams were a blast.  Student National Mentors kicked it off demonstrating their Minecraft worlds, creations, and techniques.  Attendees jumped in demonstrating their amazing creations, their favorite mods, secret formulas, and techniques.  Matthew, our youngest Cyber Jam participant, a first grader, had fun working with SNMs and attendees up to college students.  We all ended up playing together on a Minecraft server while discussing security issues and how to safely setup and manage a Minecraft server.  During our November Cyber Jam, William, a sixth grader, told his friends this was the most EPIC class ever!

Attendees can just watch and learn from those playing Minecraft, or they can get experience with Minecraft playing a free older version by googling “Minecraft free legal version”.   The free versions can only be played on your computer, you can’t play with others online.  To play with other Cyber Jam attendees during the Cyber Jam you need to buy the current version, 1.5.1 at https://minecraft.net/ for $27.  You will also need to install LogMeInHamachi, you can just google it, or we can show you how to install it during the Cyber Jam.

Student National Mentors will also share and demonstrate their advanced projects and our research and development into 2D and 3D Digital Drawing, Modeling, Animation, and Video Game Design including advanced Manga.  You can see lots of examples in our Student Galleries at www.YouthDigitalArts.com.  You can also play our new 3D Internet video game “YDA Escapes! ”  in the Student Galleries at www.YouthDigitalArts.com and learn how you can create this game in our new 3D Video Game Design 101 course.

We will demonstrate Photoshop Elements, SAI, as well as 2D and 3D Free Open Source bitmap and vector drawing, modeling, and animation programs.  We have also been known to demonstrate digital music composition as well.   Attendees will be able to download the Free and Open Source software.  If purchased from commercial developers they would normally cost several thousand dollars!

You will be able to ask our Student National Mentors questions as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours. Some of our Student National Mentors even have International Fan Artists!  One of our Student National Fellows was recently hired by Nickelodeon.

YDA Cyber Jams are open to students of all ages but focused on YDACS students from 3rd grade through High School.

All of the projects demonstrated during the Cyber Jam can be continued by attendees who enroll in our Digital Manga and Comics Cyber Studio.  They will also be able to continue asking questions of and working with our Student National Mentors and Fellows.

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

Thursday:

• 4/18/2013

• 4/25/2013

Fridays:

• 4/19/2013

• 4/26/2013

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

Facebook is a business that makes money by selling advertising.  The way they sell advertising is by tracking what you do inside Facebook, the messages you send, the friends you make, what you “like,” what your friends “like,” and what you do as you browse the web outside of Facebook.  They do this to create detailed profiles of who you are, what you like, who you like, and how you spend your time.  The more detailed the profiles the more money Facebook can make selling your profile to advertisers.

“”This is in many ways the Holy Grail of marketing: making your customers your marketers,” says Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who joined Facebook in early 2008 after building up Google’s ad sales operation from four people to 4,000. “For the first time, you can do word-of-mouth marketing at massive scale.”  To put it another way, when we use Facebook we no longer just view the ad; we become the ad.”  MIT Technology Review

Keep in mind that you should only put on Facebook what you would want your mother, your school, colleges you apply to, the FBI, or some future potential employer to see since personal information has a way of getting loose on the Internet either by Facebook selling access to your information to other applications, by spammers getting access, or by hackers getting access as they did multiple times with the Sony PlayStation Network.

We will show you how Facebook tracks you from website to website outside of Facebook.  We will show you how most corporate websites including Disney track kids wherever they go.  We will show you how you can stop cookies and web bugs from tracking you for free.

This Cyber Jam is for students, parents, grandparents, teachers, relatives, friends…

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

• 2/28/2012

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

Attendees will learn from our fantastic Student National Mentors and Student National Fellow as they demonstrate their advanced projects and our research and development into 2D Digital Drawing and Painting including advanced Manga, with a focus on 2D vector drawing and 2D bitmap drawing and painting.  You can see lots of examples in our Student Galleries at www.YouthDigitalArts.com.

We will demonstrate Photoshop Elements, SAI, and Free and Open Source Bitmap and Vector drawing Software programs.  Attendees will be able to download the Free and Open Source software.  If purchased from a commercial developer it would normally cost well over $1,000!

You will be able to ask our Student National Mentors and Student National Fellow questions as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours. One of our Student National Mentors even has an International group of Fan Artists!

This is open to students of all ages but focused on YDACS students from 3rd grade through High School.

All of the projects demonstrated during the Cyber Jam can be continued by attendees who enroll in our Digital Manga and Comics Cyber Studio.  They will also be able to continue asking questions of our Student National Mentors and Fellows.

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

• 10/18/2011
• 10/20/2011
• 10/25/2011
• 10/27/2011

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

Who says video games can’t be artistic and fun?

YDACS Student National Mentors are jamming and the sparks are flying as they create an original artistic video game, The Pirates of YDACS.  Some are jamming on the story, others on character design and drawing, some on character animation, others on the video game design and programming, and yet others on the music and scoring.  Attendees can jam along with us adding their bright ideas and sparks as they look behind the scenes and see how it’s done using the same software YDACS teaches in our digital art courses.

You will also be able to ask our Student National Mentors questions as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours.

This is open to students of all ages but focused on YDACS students from 3rd grade through High School.

All of the projects demonstrated during the Cyber Jam can be continued by attendees who enroll in our Video Game Design Cyber Studio.  They will also be able to continue asking questions of our Student National Mentors and Fellows.

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

• 10/28/2011

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

YDACS Student National Mentors are publishing and selling their own books with their original stories and illustrations on Amazon.com!  Attendees will learn how our Student National Mentors go from ideas and concepts to story-boarding, writing, drawing and illustration, fonts, and layout to produce their books.  Then they will learn about the journey through the business side of publishing, how to get your own International Standard Book Number (ISBN) which is your official book code recognized across the country, to the nitty gritty of publishing, printing, distributing, and selling on Amazon.com!  You will also get a chance to purchase our Student National Mentor’s books.

You will be able to ask our Student National Mentors questions as we have fun Jamming with each other for 3 hours. One of our Student National Mentors even has an International group of Fan Artists!

This is open to students of all ages but focused on YDACS students from 3rd grade through High School.

All of the projects demonstrated during the Cyber Jam can be continued by attendees who enroll in our Digital Manga and Comics Cyber Studio.  They will also be able to continue asking questions of our Student National Mentors and Fellows.

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

• 10/21/11

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button

Step 1 – Description

Attendees will learn learn from our Student National Mentors and Student National Fellow, who was just accepted into Disney’s Leadership Program!, about our research and development into 3D Drawing, 3D Modeling, 3D Animation, and 3D Video Game Design.  We will demonstrate Free and Open Source Software for the Drawing, Modeling, Animation, and the Video Game Design.  Attendees will be able to download all three software programs for free.  If the equivalent software was bought commercially it would normally cost several thousand dollars!

You will be able to ask our Student National Fellow questions as we move through the 3 hour Jam session.

This is open to students of all ages but focused on YDACS students from 3rd grade through High School.

All of the project files demonstrated during the Cyber Jam will be available to attendees who enroll in our Video Game Design Cyber Studio where they can hack, mash, and mix them as they wish.  They will also be able to continue asking questions of our Student National Mentors and Fellows.

Step 2 – Select Date by clicking link and Enter Registration Information

• 10/17/11
• 10/19/11
• 10/24/11
• 10/26/11

Step 3 – Pay $40 per attendee by clicking the Buy Now Button for your selected date