Natalie Creates Stop Motion Projects with Tynker!

Natalie Creates Stop Motion Projects with Tynker!

We’re excited to introduce Natalie, a fifth-grader from Minnesota, who loves to draw, cook, and create art. Her interests run the gamut—her favorite subjects in school are reading, art, and math! She has a knack for finishing thick chapter books all in one day, and her favorite fantasy series is Wings of Fire. We sat down with Natalie to learn how she uses coding to express herself creatively, have fun with her friends, and prepare for her future!

What do you want to be when you grow up? Maybe an illustrator, maybe a children’s book illustrator or maybe a comic book illustrator.

How did you get introduced to Tynker, and how long have you been using it? I’ve been using it for 2 years, and I got introduced to Tynker by my school.

How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? We started out with a tutorial called Falling Monsters. Before that, I was coding on Scratch.

How has Tynker helped you improve your coding skills? I would say that it improved my coding skills, since I wasn’t so good at it at first.

What is your favorite project that you’ve made so far? That’s a hard one. I’d say it would be Tin Foil Catch! I like Tin Foil Catch because one day I was just bored at our house and I thought, Hey, why not do a stop motion video? And since I hadn’t seen any stop motion videos on Tynker, I thought, Hey, that would be unique, so I tried it out. This is first time I’ve used stop motion. 

Where do you get inspiration for Tin Foil Catch? Well, it just popped out of the back of my head. I wasn’t really inspired by anything.

                                                                       “Tin Foil Catch”

How long did it take you to make? It didn’t take so long, to be honest; it took around 30-45 minutes. I just winged it!

Why do you like to code? I like it because it’s fun to me, I’m able to make my own game to my heart’s content, I can do whatever I want, I can do my own background…That’s what I love about Tynker!

Do you have a favorite code block? I don’t have a favorite code block because, you know, all code blocks are used in some way. There are no favorites.

What do you do with a project when you’re done? I do go through it sometimes, sometimes I just publish it right away. But for the longer projects I take a ten-minute break and then keep coding so on and so forth until the game is ready. To blow off steam after coding, to stop my brain from going, “Oh my gosh, I might fail! Ahh!”

What are you planning to make next? Well, I’m still thinking about it. Thinking of maybe a monster-battling game, maybe a dragon game.

What is your favorite thing about Tynker? I like how people can share their works of art, you know, and share their games for people to play with, they can share facts, they can share anything, basically. I’ve had a few times where an idea was sparked by a game that I was playing on the featured part!

How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future? Well, there’s a possibility that I might be a game coder or a game designer. Which that could help me prepare for that.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yes, I think they should! It’s fun, and it helps you learn.

What advice would you give to those kids who are just starting out with Tynker? I’d say try out one of the tutorials first, get to know the blocks, look at someone’s project, try to remix it and look at the code.

Shaina, Natalie’s mom, told us why she’s excited that her daughter is learning to code: “I love it! I really hope that she learns a lot more. I used to do a bit of web design when I was younger, so I know a little bit of web design coding.” Shaina encourages Natalie in her experience of learning how to code by playing some of Natalie’s games and watching her code.

Natalie’s used coding to help develop her artistic interest, and she codes with her friends! Besides the technical skill of learning how to code, Shaina told us that coding has helped Natalie in other ways: “She really enjoys drawing, so just incorporating that with Tynker is really good. It really benefits her. Hopefully she keeps this up and does become an illustrator!” When we asked Shaina what she thinks of Tynker, she told us, “I like that they can share and play each others’ games and stuff and like it and comment on it, and they’re able remix it, which helps them learn how to do certain things they’re not sure how to do.”

We’re excited to see how Natalie integrates her artistic skills with Tynker! Thanks for talking with us, Natalie and Shaina. We look forward to your future projects, Natalie!