IMAGINE THAT! UW-Stout game design and animation students were able to bring kids' imaginations to life through a recent collaboration. (Pictured: Sade Nagel working with a 4K student. Submitted photos)

Did you have an imaginary friend as a child? What if you could bring that character to life as an adult? Animation and game design students at UW-Stout met with local children recently to bring their characters and creatures to life using 3D software.

The activity, called the Creature Collaboration, brought to life all kinds of funky creatures. From a purple and red butterfly to a red-eyed princess in a red ballgown, a fox holding an orange, a rainbow bunny-like creature, a kitty with a pink collar, a green monster with sweeping arms, a dragon-dog-unicorn, a brown bear, a vampire holding a flower, and the warden from Minecraft.

The Creature Collaboration was between Assistant Professor Karl Koehle’s 3D Organic Modeling class and Maggie Keenan’s 4K classroom in the university’s Child and Family Study Center (CFSC).

“One of the best parts of my classroom is that we are right on campus, so the children get to have these collaborative opportunities,” Keenan said. “It’s so neat that the kids helped their college partners with this project. And the children were so excited to see their drawings come to life.”

First, Koehle’s class paired off with the 17 young artists in their 4K room. While the children colored their characters, the 3D students observed, asked questions and took notes on what to include in their digital adaptations.

The children then visited their college partners in a Micheels Hall computer lab to see their character designs brought to life.

The Creature Collaboration project's final poster.

CFSC Director Allison Feller thinks the collaboration is a “unique opportunity where both our young learners and college students benefit. The children were able to see their ideas brought to life, while the design students applied their skills to make those ideas a reality. As the university’s early childhood education lab, we welcome opportunities to connect classroom theory with hands-on experience, which is at the heart of UW-Stout's polytechnic mission.”

The 3D Organic Modeling class introduces students to the basics of digital sculpting tools, which mimic properties of physical clay that can be pinched, poked and pulled, Koehle explained.

“By introducing an in-person collaboration, it was my intent to give more practice to the early design process, encourage face-to-face communication with clients and offer an opportunity to embrace exploration of ideas,” he said. “It’s an important exercise to support a stakeholder who has ideas and goals but is not as adept in visual communication skills or doesn’t use the technical terminology. It's a unique design challenge to interpret meaning, then choose and apply a cohesive style.”

The collaboration marks the 10-year anniversary of a similar project between the CFSC and Professor Dave Beck’s game design class in 2014.

Read the full story from UW-Stout at uwstout.edu.