The Rotoball Project:

I began the Rotoball Project began in 2005 as a class activity when a student showed an interest in learning to rotoscope after we watched part of the Richard Linklater’s film Waking Life.  The idea is that each student animates 15 seconds of a ball entering the screen, transforming and interacting with the animator, and leaving the screen.  These projects are then stitched together for a longer animation.  The video at left is a short sample.

Four years later, the project now involves contributions from 20 schools from around the world, and has received numerous awards from participating school art shows, and mentions on websites, newspapers, and magazines, such as Education Week’s Digital Directions Magazine, Newsday, The Adobe Leadership Blog, Scholastic Magazine’s website, and the illustration blog, Drawn! For more information about the rotoball project, please visit the project website.

Artist Trading Cards:

Artist Trading Cards are unique pieces of artwork that are meant to be exchanged and traded like baseball cards.  This collaboration was organized by myself and Dr. Craig Roland, professor of art education at the University of Florida, Gainsville in celebration of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.  Craig and I collected and redistributed cards from 19 schools around the world.   This project also gave a chance to collaborate with my wife and her fifth grade art classes at the Shanghai American School.

The Portrait Party:

Based on artist and teacher Rama Hughes’ project, a ‘portrait party’ is a project or event in which students exchange portraits of each other.   Through online collaboration, we’ve extended this idea to connect students from across the globe.  In this example, we exchanged portraits with Melissa Woodland’s foundations art class in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.   This project was featured in the keynote address by Professor Craig Roland at the 2010 Pennsylvania Art Education Association Conference.

Every year I try to find new ways to engage students with international collaborative projects.  These projects allow students to connect, create, and share their work with an authentic global audience.

Paint the World with Light is a collection of long exposure photographs created by  classes around the world.  Initiated by myself, fellow ADE Matt Cautheron from Digital Arts Technical Academy, and Mike Skocko from Valhalla High School, the final product is a self-published book that can be purchased at blurb.com.  All proceeds from

this project benefit the Jacaranda foundation for AIDS orphans in Malawi.  An article I wrote about this project was published as the cover story for the November 2010 issue of School Arts Magazine.