Auburn Animates and Creates by Coding!

Meet Auburn, an aspiring engineer who uses Tynker to bring her drawings and ideas to life as colorful animations! Auburn is going into the 7th grade in Florida, and she’s been using Tynker ever since she was in the 3rd grade in Colorado. In her free time, Auburn draws, sings, and dances, but most of all she enjoys creating animations!

Auburn’s dad, Slater, thinks it’s great that Auburn is interested in coding, remarking, “I love that she’s doing it, and I love watching her play around with [Tynker] – sitting on the couch and not doing other things, but trying to learn and better herself. It’s great.”

Auburn is very passionate about creating something new! We had the opportunity to speak with Auburn and her dad to understand how she transforms her creativity into animation and code.  

What’s your favorite subject in school? Math! I love math, math is fun! I think it’s interesting because it’s a way to use numbers to figure out other things.

Why do you like to code? I like to code because it gives you a chance to create, sort of like moving pictures. Instead of explaining what it is, you can show people what it is without words.

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? My favorite project that I’ve made so far is an animation. It’s an animation of Bendy, a character from a video game that I like, sort of doing a little dance he does in the game. I like that one a lot because it actually looked good.

“Bendy Art Dump Animation”

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was sort of surprised! The project that you chose to feature was for an art competition. I also won third place in that art competition!

What’s your favorite thing you can do in Tynker? I like to use it to create projects! I like that you can actually draw your own art right on the site; in other programs, the drawing tools are hard to use. I’m glad you can just draw right on the site and not have to go anywhere else and upload it.

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? I usually debug it and then publish it. If it still has bugs, I go back and redo the project.

How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? The teacher did a few basic rundowns of how to use the block coding system, but I pretty much figured out how to use it myself.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Oh yeah! I think coding is fun!

“Undertale!”

How do you think learning coding has prepared you for the future? I want to be an engineer when I grow up. Since technology has gotten better over time, I think the majority of designing new pieces of things will be done on computers. I think this is the first step in learning how to do more advanced code.

What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? Start small first, then gradually start adding new steps as you go to make a better project.

Auburn’s dad, Slater, is a mechanical engineer who works in a field where he has to take apart and fix things every day. Slater says that mechanical engineering and coding are very similar – “you start with the basic building blocks, and you put something together and create something.” He believes that “we need to push children more and more toward coding, and we need to get more and more folks into it as the future progresses.”

Slater completely supports Auburn’s interest in coding, especially because of the way coding helps children learn to create. “It’s the process of thinking about ‘what do I want the end state to be,’ and then ‘how do I get to that end state’ and what the journey is to get there.”

Auburn’s passion for creating new projects is clearly shared by her dad, and we can’t wait to see what other projects she plans to engineer in the future. We’re glad that Auburn is getting experience actualizing her projects with Tynker. Thank you for talking to us, Auburn and Slater!