Rincon Del Relato

Today we miraculously finished up with the kids actually getting to use photoshop and after effects to build pieces of their final animations. It was rough work because we had only managed to get the computers, software, videos, and scanned pictures only hours before we actually needed them. Ecuador is not reknowned for its ability to plan things out in advance. In fact, Alvaro, the professor i worked with taught me the most important spanish word, "Plantillas," which means like the insert in your shoe and refers to people who tell you they will do something and then that thing just never happens.

Like the guy who eagerly said he would take care of photoshopping the pictures for the kids, (which are the main things we need before the kids can really do any kind of animation on the computers) and then just showed up 4 hours late- 3 hours too late to make a difference in the kids' day. But we carried on like troopers and all the kids got to get a lesson in how to use photoshop on top of using After Effects.

One nino, Jhon, was a little pro at this stuff! Always 2-3 steps ahead of me when i was trying to teach the rest of the group- And he had never seen this stuff before in his life!

I think the kids really had lots of fun. Even though they did like 4 straight hours of work (with only a few minutes of playing in the Koi pond, and some transcendental meditation in the Japanese pagoda on campus) the kids kept on working and made some really great stuff. We had a big pizza party for them at the end and it was really terrific to get to see them wolfing down the pizza and going nuts in the ball pit.

Oh and Rincon Del Relato is the catchy spanish version we are using for Storytelling Studio. It means kind of Storytelling Corner.

Look at this awesome dragon costume they made!

Jorge, the dragon, cast me as the evil wizard, or Brujo, in his film!