WHETHER your child thinks in words or pictures, Capilano University offers a summer camp for nearly every artistic temperament.
Children who want to turn a blank sheet of paper into a work of art using only the letters of the alphabet may want to try a writing camp led by author Danika Dinsmore, best-known for penning the young-adult fantasy series Faerie Tales from the White Forest.
"I definitely get them creating almost immediately," she says. "I don't want them to feel like they're at school, I want them to feel like they're at camp."
Running from July 16 to 20, the Creative Storytelling camp is designed to liberate the imaginations of writers between the ages of 8 and 12.
Much like biting into a biscuit brought childhood rushing back for Marcel Proust, the young writers are encouraged to write stories based on the scents supplied to them on cotton balls.
"Every day I try to give them a new way of doing or looking at something or playing with words that they maybe haven't done before," Dinsmore says.
Dinsmore also runs a dystopian fiction writing camp for children 13 and older.
"Last year, I taught this dystopian writing class for the first time, and the kids, their work was so good that I sent the compiled stories to my publisher," Dinsmore says.
The camp, which runs from July 9 to 13, has featured tales of war-torn cities and postapocalyptic worlds, according to Dinsmore.
The free-flow of ideas and inspiration can lead to a highly-productive and loosely organized camp, according to Dinsmore.
"A lot of them are shy at first when they sit down, particularly the middle grades," she says. "I haven't really seen any kids remain shy for the duration of the week."
Children with an artistic hand and an imaginative mind might be interested in one of the cartooning and animation camps taught by former Disney animator Nadine Wagner-Westerbarkey.
For young artists who want to create their own comic strips without resorting to a newspaper and Silly Putty, Wagner-Westerbarkey teaches the Cartooning Fun afternoon camp for children between the ages of five and eight.
"With the young group it's always something to make it as entertaining as possible," Wagner-Westerbarkey says.
The camp focuses on the building blocks of cartooning and design.
"They get very simple shapes, and then out of those simple shapes I show them that you can make different designs," Wagner-Westerbarkey explains. "Everything that you see is based on simple shapes."
When the figures are drawn, Wagner-Westerbarkey works with the kids on adding facial expressions and telling stories.
"There's usually something that we do where they create a little stick-figure kind of animation with a character that they get to design, and it's always a lot of fun because they get to play with it afterwards, too," she says.
Artists 13 years and older can explore the challenges of adding movement to their drawings in the Animation: Cartooning and Anime camp.
"We will explore the world of how to actually set things in motion," Wagner-Westerbarkey says.
The camp builds on the concepts of threedimensionality while showing young artists what it's like to work for a major animation studio.
"They will get a chance to go to nearly a professional level with the course on a very fun basis," Wagner-Westerbarkey says.
Artists are encouraged to study themselves to further their understanding of their characters.
"There's a lot of acting involved in the whole process as well, because you have to understand how to feel and how to do a pose yourself in order to be able to draw it."
