February 02 - Superhero Drawing Studio

This morning I got up dumb early for no reason at all and couldn't go back to sleep. I was pretty darn groggy, but fortunately for me, today's morning activity was a nice and low-key one: Superhero Drawing Studio.

This activity started out as just "Drawing", but I found that making something too open-ended for kids made them less able to focus on the task at hand. Limitations make great walls to bounce off of. I consider my ethnicity to be "Comic Book Nerd", and those genes must have passed off to my kids because Lyric is CRAZY about superheroes (Zephyr is not as crazy about them, but still enjoys them). So I made "Drawing" into "Comic Book Drawing Studio", but that was a little too aspirational at the time for the kids (I do intend to go back to it sometime, though). So we took a step back and just made it "Superhero Drawing Studio".

All you need for Superhero drawing studio is paper and writing implements, and you draw superheroes with your kids. Drawing with your kids is a great way to teach them stuff: drawing stuff like "how to draw a stick figure", sure, but also parts of the body, perspective, light and shadow, etc.

Today Lyric was really annoying Zephyr, and Zephyr was in the trap of dealing with someone feeding off negative attention. The more Zephyr got frustrated with Lyric, the more Lyric wanted to be around Zephyr to provoke him more. Zephyr was saying how he wanted to punch Lyric in the face, so I separated the kids and took Zephyr to have him draw someone getting punched in the face instead.

This was what I drew, and I tried to show Zephyr foreshortening - how one hand looks way bigger because it's closer to the viewer. But then of course, Lyric wanted to get in on what we were doing, so I started making a drawing with Lyric and having him pick out the colors we should use for it, and Zephyr snuck off to go make his own drawing in the other room.

Lyric picked what colors should go where and then tried his hands at the pants and gloves, and then deigned the two "wings" on the back. It came out pretty good, I think! We got to talk about what a visor was, the differences between metal and plastic, and how cool "racing stripes" are. Lyric wanted it to be part orange because it's his favorite color and part purple because it's my favorite color.

Meanwhile, Zephyr had gone back to his room and tried to draw Zomboss from Plants Vs. Zombies (after checking in with me that we could draw supervillains as well... totally allowed.) He went on the iPad to get a reference and then went at it. I'm digging how he's drawing beady eyes.

By the way, that's just what Zephyr wanted to wear to school today. He's into wearing ties.

February 01 - MUNNY making

Today was a reward day for the kids, because they had helped me out with a huge project over the weekend. SO MUCH MORE ON THIS HUGE PROJECT SOON, it's kind of immense but I'm not ready to reveal it yet. But the kids were amazing in it, and they deserved something special.

So today I gave them something I've been holding onto for a few years: giant blank MUNNY figures from Kidrobot. We'd decorated tiny ones before, but this time I broke out the big guns.

I got these as Kidrobot on Prince Street was going out of business and had always been meaning to get into them, especially when I wanted to design figures for 3D printing. But I just never got around to it, and they've been hanging around forever. The kids got really excited about it, though. The chance to make and design their own toy was a huge deal.

Zephyr named his Sarah (presumably after his teacher Sarah, which is probably a good sign he's enjoying school) and that made Lyric want to make his a girl as well. He called her "Emily". He wanted her to have a red and white striped shirt, just like him.

The smaller Munny figures we had previously done had stickers, but for these larger versions we needed to use sharpies and pencils to decorate them. I showed them how to plan out what they wanted to do with pencil and then finish it up with a Sharpie. We talked about how eyes further apart are "Cuter", and how eyes change shape when people smile.

I also showed them how adding eyelashes to an eye makes something look more feminine (what I suspect cartoon anthropologists call "the Minnie Mouse principle"). I prefer to think of it as passing on basic cartooning principles rather than gendered heteronormativity. Zephyr did his all on his own, I drew in Lyric's shirt and eye and mouth placement. But then Lyric started on his own pants and Zephyr started making a rainbow banding pattern!

Work in progress. I drew Pickle and Peanut on the TV that came with Zephyr's for him.

We had to get off to school and left the Munnys in mid production. But we shall return to them! Progress reports as they happen.

DAY ZERO - January 31st, 2016

So I'm going to try my hand at dadblogging. This is an experiment for February, I've essentially dared myself to do an entry every weekday. Bear with me, it'll be worth it. I think.

This blog is going to be (at least on the surface) about the morning activities I do with my two sons Zephyr and Lyric. Every month I make up a schedule of things we can do in the morning before school, and I've found it to be a great way to 1) spend quality time with my kids, 2) teach them important lessons in a fun way, 3) enjoy being a dad, and 4) not feel like I'm wasting the most precious moments of my children's development immersed in whatever time suck has hold of me at the moment. Just a little planning and preparation has made being a dad WAY more enjoyable, and I felt like I should share it.

I'll get into it, the reasons behind it, what comprises it, and what you have to do to do it yourself as we go on. But for day zero, I just want to get this out there and get moving. So without further ado, here is February 2016's #MorningFunManifesto schedule: