07.24.2012 08:10 PM

From the overflowing proud Dad file

So, out with Son One tonight.  He’s 14.  We found a new 7-11, and thus a new source of Slurpees.  A Good Thing.  Then, he asks me if I want to see the video he did.  Sure, says I.  Watch it on his device.  “Wow,” says me.  “Who did the animation and the coding and all that?”

“Me,” he says.

What I find amazing about this is that he learned to do this on his own, principally by watching some YouTube videos.  He explained that it’s incomplete, and is just a “test,” and that it tails off at the end.  But I told him I thought it was pretty neat, and would like his permission to show y’all.  He said sure – so here you go.

19 Comments

  1. Proving that the future is in good hands. Also loving the Beethoven!! Congrats Kinsella Son One 🙂

  2. Dino North of Toronto says:

    I’m a Secondary School Communication Technology teacher and have been teaching in this area for 15 years. Hence, I’ve seen plenty of animations – 2D and 3D. Some great and others not so much. For a 14 year old who is self-taught, I find this to be a very good animation. The music is a nice touch.

    I’m curious as to which 3D animation program he used. If it’s open source and free, I’m guessing he used Blender. If that’s the case then that’s even more impressive. There’s a bit of a learning curve in picking that program up on your own.

    I’m always amazed at the stuff that students can do on a computer. When I was in high school, we were the last to use the punch cards and started to use the Commodore PET computers. Ah, memories…..

    Anyway, this is a job well done. Can’t wait to see the final product.

  3. Philippe says:

    Wow. I feel old and inadequate.

    Props to your son Warren, very well done.

  4. Transcanada says:

    He’s flying around his Minecraft creations according to my son also 14. If you have a 10-14 year old boy you probably know that minecraft is the big game right now.

    • Warren says:

      Oh, yes. Sigh. But happy he’s creating it, more than just playing it.

      • MCBellecourt says:

        A creation that is elegant in its simplicity, and he choreographed it beautifully. And, just as much as it says how talented he is, it also says how awesome his Dad is for encouraging and nurturing the talents of his kids.

        Give yourself a pat on the back, Mr. K. Every kid should have a dad like you.

  5. Marc-André Chiasson says:

    Bravo young Mr. Kinsella. Well done. Now we see who has the real talent in the family.Way back in the late ’60s early ’70s (not sure of the exact year), I took a one month course at the National Film Board in Montreal on, of all things, the use of the videocamera (magnétoscope) as a tool for social development and change. One of our facilitators (his name might ring a bell with you Warren) was the great cinematographer Claude Jutras. All that to say that during this stint, I had the opportunity of seeing their animation studio and viewing first hand the painstaking frame-by-frame work involved on what I think they called the animation filming tables. Filmmaking, if they still even call it that, sure has come a long way. Looking forward to seeing more of your good work down the road.

  6. que sera sera says:

    I couldn’t help but think I was viewing an artist’s rendering of Planet Conservative, after the Rapture!! LOL!!

    Pretty awesome stuff.

  7. Bil H says:

    warrenkinsella.com

    “making me feel dummer and less useful to society with every post”.

    Just a few days ago i became a ‘fucking idiot’. Now i’m a technological doorknob too. He’s 14.

    Good times.

  8. Doug says:

    Great video.

    You’re looking at the new literacy, I think. Increasingly things that we thought of as the preserve of trained experts – music, videography, photography and so on – are becoming part of how everyday people express themselves.

    I think it is a similar process to what happened with writing long ago. In the early days of writing, it took a class of professionals to get words down. You had to know where to pick the reeds, how to sharpen them into pens, what it took to make inks, and so forth. With the passage of time and technical development all you needed to write was the words and we were immensely better off as a species for it.

  9. Greg says:

    As a parent of a 13 year old, I can tell you that Minecraft (Mindcrack) is addictive. The friendly Scientology folks are setting up Minecraft-anon chapters everywhere.

    • Transcanada says:

      Minecraft takes up a lot of time around this house but you need to be pragmatic about it, at least it isn’t “Call of duty” or “Grand theft auto” and who can’t like a game that has zombie pigmen in it?

      • Warren says:

        I’m not wild about him playing it, but he’s told me he’s interested in building it, not playing it. We parents take our small victories where we can.

        • Doug says:

          Speaking as a gamer and a parent, this is one of the games you want him to be playing.

          My 11-year-old daughter hosts a Minecraft server. The thing is a virtual hangout for her group of friends. They build worlds together, explore them, tear them down and then build them again. Lack of physical exercise aside, I can’t imagine a more productive kind of play for them to be engaged in.

  10. beesha says:

    Minecraft addictive? Naaaaw 😛

    Looks like it’ll be a cool map, I like the towers he’s built at the very beginning. I’d like to see more of those, but I’m a bit of a building nut.

    Minecraft is truly great though – so much is possible!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3tFYLkd_NM&feature=plcp

    Hope you find this one interesting!

  11. Marc-André Chiasson says:

    James. Good one. For once I can laugh sincerely about something you said…and in your new “brevity” format no less. Dare I hope that you are now on the right path?

  12. Informed says:

    Regarding the millenials and younger – the future is in great hands

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