Digital Arts Summer Camps @McMaster

Welcome to the Digital Arts Summer Camps tutorial hub. This website provides step-by-step guides for the software and creative tools used by children and teens participating in the summer arts programs at McMaster University.

Participants can use these tutorials during camp activities or revisit them independently to review techniques, complete projects, and continue experimenting after each session. The tutorials introduce tools such as GIMP, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Krita, and other digital platforms used for image-making, animation, video editing, 3D modelling, and interactive media.

About

This website supports hands-on learning in digital arts through clear and accessible instructions. Each tutorial breaks a creative process into manageable steps and includes examples, exercises, and technical guidance.

The goal is to help participants build confidence with digital tools while developing their own artistic ideas. Rather than focusing only on software skills, the activities encourage experimentation, problem-solving, storytelling, collaboration, and creative exploration.

Junior Camps

GIMP: Digital Art and Image Editing

GIMP is a free, open-source image-editing program used for photography, digital collage, illustration, and graphic design. These beginner-friendly tutorials introduce the GIMP interface, layers, selections, image adjustments, filters, painting tools, and file export.

⬇️ Download GIMP

Tutorials

  • 📷 Basic Photographic Editing
    Learn how to import, transform, enhance, and export photographs.

  • ✂️ Digital Collage
    Learn how to combine photographs, textures, layers, and selections to create a digital collage.

  • Digital Illustration
    Learn how to use painting and erasing tools to create digital illustrations.

DaVinci Resolve: Video Editing

DaVinci Resolve is professional video-editing software used in film, television, and online media production. It combines video editing, colour correction, audio production, visual effects, and motion graphics in one platform.

The free version includes the tools needed for most beginner and intermediate creative projects, including cutting and trimming clips, adding transitions and effects, working with multiple video layers, and creating keyframe animations.

⬇️ Download DaVinci Resolve

Tutorials

  • 🎥 Intro to Linear Video Editing
    Learn how to create a project, import and organize recordings, edit clips on a timeline, add transitions and effects, and export a finished video.

  • 🎞️ Intro to Video Collage
    Learn how to combine multiple video layers, resize and position clips, apply effects and composite modes, and add text.

  • 🌀 Intro to Keyframe Animation
    Learn how to use keyframes to animate properties such as position, scale, rotation, and opacity.

Krita: Digital Illustration and Animation

Krita is a free, open-source digital painting program designed for artists, illustrators, and animators. It includes professional tools for drawing, painting, working with layers, and creating frame-by-frame animation within a customizable interface.

Participants can use Krita to sketch, create digital illustrations, develop concept art, and animate short scenes.

⬇️ Download Krita

Tutorials

  • 🖌️ Intro to Digital Illustration
    Learn how to create and save a project, navigate the Krita workspace, draw with the Freehand Brush tool, work with layers, and import images.

  • 🌀 Intro to Animation in Krita
    Learn how to prepare the Krita workspace for animation, create a frame-by-frame sequence, preview your work, and export the finished animation.

Pictarize: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) combines digital content with the physical world. Through a smartphone or tablet, users can view images, videos, text, and sound layered over real-world objects and environments.

Pictarize is a browser-based tool for creating AR experiences. Users connect digital materials, such as images, videos, and sounds, to physical images called targets. Viewers can then point their device’s camera at a target to activate the digital content.

Pictarize can be used in two ways:

  • Try Out Mode: No account is required, but projects are automatically deleted after 24 hours.
  • Registered Account: A free account allows users to save projects, return to them later, and organize multiple AR scenes.

Camp access note: During the summer camps, participants will use Try Out Mode only. Creating a registered account requires an adult, so participants should not create personal accounts. Projects made in Try Out Mode are automatically deleted after 24 hours. Make sure to complete and document your project during the camp session.

🔗 Access Pictarize

Tutorials

Teen Intensives

Motion Capture and Animation Foundations

This two-week intensive program introduces high school students to the creative and technical foundations of 3D animation and motion capture. Participants begin by learning Blender, a free and open-source 3D creation program. They then use Perception Neuron 3 to capture real-world movement and apply it to rigged digital characters.

Photographic Foundations

This four-day intensive program introduces high school students.

Credits: Jessica A. Rodríguez