Near the end of the last school year, I invited kids around the state of Michigan to send me monster designs. Close to 3,000 drawings showed up to my house. I spent the summer picking out designs that inspired me as an illustrator, and I worked up fully rendered pieces of "fan art" in colored pencil with the same techniques I use when illustrating picture books.
The collection is on display during ArtPrize 2017 in Grand Rapids Michigan outside the Children's Museum. Throughout ArtPrize, kids continue to submit designs, I illustrate new fan art monsters Live on-site, and the results are added daily to the growing collection.
More info: artprize.org
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that face is like mine when I'm caught doing something I shouldn't be doing
All the original drawings are pretty good. That kid got imagination!
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They should make teddies out of all these drawings and give them to the kids
I am curious about some of the images having what appear to be a starting shape or started lines that the kids add to. Do you provide starters to the children or is this something their teachers do or is this something else entirely?
Yep - I gave a prompt to get the kids started. Only 4 shapes were used but still led to such variety!
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The end results are probably what the children already see - thanks for letting us adults have a glimpse into their minds ;-D
Love them all! Disney/ Pixar should make movies based on these (or other characters drawn by children)
Aaron Zenz you are amazing.....and your kids a very lucky to have you interpret their work!!
Fantastic idea to kick-start creativity on both sides. well done!
Love the encouragement this is to kids! Keep up the great work, we love it!
They need to create a kid's animated show that has the audience send in drawings and this guy and a few other artists create stories around them. It would be so beneficial to kids self-esteem!
It's so interesting to see how vastly different the kids' ideas are, when working from the same prompts (there are two or three heavy black lines that must have been the starting point for these). They are so cool!
I wish I could learn from you. You are so talented. Great job. This must have made those kids happy.
Dave DeVries did something similar called The Monster Engine years ago. http://www.themonsterengine.com/
They should make teddies out of all these drawings and give them to the kids
I am curious about some of the images having what appear to be a starting shape or started lines that the kids add to. Do you provide starters to the children or is this something their teachers do or is this something else entirely?
Yep - I gave a prompt to get the kids started. Only 4 shapes were used but still led to such variety!
Load More Replies... The end results are probably what the children already see - thanks for letting us adults have a glimpse into their minds ;-D
Love them all! Disney/ Pixar should make movies based on these (or other characters drawn by children)
Aaron Zenz you are amazing.....and your kids a very lucky to have you interpret their work!!
Fantastic idea to kick-start creativity on both sides. well done!
Love the encouragement this is to kids! Keep up the great work, we love it!
They need to create a kid's animated show that has the audience send in drawings and this guy and a few other artists create stories around them. It would be so beneficial to kids self-esteem!
It's so interesting to see how vastly different the kids' ideas are, when working from the same prompts (there are two or three heavy black lines that must have been the starting point for these). They are so cool!
I wish I could learn from you. You are so talented. Great job. This must have made those kids happy.
Dave DeVries did something similar called The Monster Engine years ago. http://www.themonsterengine.com/
