By Sean Bradley
Livingston Daily Press & Argus
LIVINGSTON, Mich. (AP) - Elijah and Erin Hamilton want to help bring dreams to life.
The Howell couple started Mitten Pixels, a video game development company, two years ago in an effort to combine 3D animation, visual scripting and cinematic storytelling skills into an interactive video game creation experience.
They will host online Science Technology Engineering and Math, also known as STEM, game development workshops centered around World War II icon "Rosie the Riveter" and the "Legend of John Henry."
"One of the big things we're teaching is how to create characters that react to their environment," Elijah Hamilton, 33, told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus. "It's like painting but you're painting with a critical mind."
High school-age students will participate in live, online workshops for three days learning animation, visual scripting, and cinematic camera work to create a historic adventure game, according to a news release.
The first workshop for the "Rosie the Riveter" game is from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. each day from August 6-8.
The second workshop is from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. each day from August 20-22 and is based on the "Legend of John Henry."
Both online workshops are free to the public but require registration to be able to download the digital assets needed in order to participate.
"This will give students hands-on experience with essential professional game industry software including Unity, Cinemachine and Playmaker," Erin Hamilton, 31, said.
The program's vision is to introduce students to hands-on science, history and math while equipping them with valuable interactive design and development skills that will open the doors to career opportunities and entrepreneurial endeavors, the couple said in the news release.
"STEM careers are the largest-growing sector in the workforce, with job opportunities growing at such a rate that there will be an estimated one million fewer STEM workers than STEM job openings," they stated.
The couple, who have two young children and live on a 10-acre farm, started hosting the workshops in person earlier this year, Erin Hamilton said. They later started hosting workshops online to accommodate more people.
They came into the video game design industry after working at a creative art agency in Ferndale until 2015.
Later, the couple started a movie poster creation company, then created digital effects for movies.
"Eventually, we realized we were into the 3D and interactive side of it," Erin Hamilton said.
Video game design is a burgeoning area in STEM.
"It creates critical thinking. It brings out art," said Ricky Bennett, director of innovation and partnership at Campbell, California-based ID Tech Camps.
The camps are hosted around the world for children and teens to learn STEM concepts via video game design, coding and more. Approximately 400,000 students worldwide have participated in the camps since ID Tech Camp's inception in 1999.
Since 2003, the University of Michigan has hosted camps with courses covering game design, the "Unreal" gaming engine, and more. There are more than 700 preteens and teenagers participating this summer, Bennett said.
Also, Oakland University started hosting camps this summer, Bennett said.
Published: Wed, Jul 31, 2019
