Joylabz is looking for a contract graphic artist to develop 2D graphic assets for games to be used with Makey Makey. This position will help create interactive games that are part of a broader educational toolkit to reinvent how the world thinks about gaming.
Responsibilities
Design 2D animation, characters, and environments that are styled for our brand
Design UI elements for navigation of game menus
including icons and motion graphics
Create clean final game art assets and animated content for the developer
Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Solid visual design sense with ability to draw and communicate visually (may need to sketch ideas)
Have an art portfolio including 8-bit style pixel or voxel art
Expertise in Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and your preferred 3D modeling software.
Expertise in managing asset deliver pipeline - you will need to deliver final production assets
Experience with delivering 2D assets using web technologies (HTML and CSS) a big plus.
Experience with 2D animation, and/or creating art for animation
Excellent time-management skills for working remotely and ability to meet deadlines under pressure
You work independently, however are quick to ask for help / opinions when stuck or to ensure your ideas are on the right track. We are geographically distributed team... so this is super important!
A passion for education or gaming.
Education and Experience:
Education: Bachelor of Arts in Illustration, Animation, Visual Communication, or similar
2 - 3 Years of experience in a digital graphic art
Position Pluses:
Experience in Scratch
Experience in the Maker Community
Experience in game or ed tech development, design, and UI/UX
Email jobs@joylabz.com with a cover letter, resume, and attachment or link to your portfolio.
Jay is part of a proposed SXSW panel. Please pop over and give it a thumbs up.
From Amazon’s recent removal of their boy and girl categories for toys, to Facebook’s redesign of their “Friend” logo to make the female and male silhouettes equal, the tech industry is in the early stages of re-examining its representations of gender. Design is often at the heart of defining these gender roles, which can begin at a young age with toys. This panel will discuss the recent movement to de-gender design in the tech world, how start-ups are leading the revolution, and why it’s good for business.
Jenn Choi gives Makey Makey a huge shoutout for 2015 back-to-school:
If your child’s teacher was using the Makey Makey in her classroom, consider yourself unbelievably lucky. Because Makey Makey has limitless possibilities, any teacher who has found a way to use them is likely a teacher who really knows what she’s doing.
Scratch is a great platform for incorporating Makey Makey into the classroom. This lesson plan is divided for students new to Scratch and students who are more advanced in coding with Scratch. This is also a great lesson to incorporate classroom knowledge AFTER completing the Game Controller Challenge.
Inspired by Makey Makey Operation game and cardboard sorting machine workshop by Jeff Branson of Sparkfun, you'll finally have a reason to make an Operation game, ahem, I mean sorting game with Makey Makey!
Simple Circuit: To complete a simple circuit, you must create a loop for the electrons to flow. So you need to get power from your power source to the LED and back to the power source. If you build a successful current, your light will shine! In this lab, you will create your own simple circuits with Makey Makey and once you've mastered that, you'll move on to parallel circuits. Lastly, you'll create your own DIY switch with Makey Makey!
Appropriate for grade levels ES to HS (with adaptations)
Don't know coding? Want to dip your feet in the Makey Makey pool with minimal start up or fuss? Then this is the lesson for you! Let students explore soundscapes with real objects in this musical water lesson that utilizes a key mapping software called Soundplant.
With just a little programming instruction, your students will be able to incorporate real life objects with rhyming riddles to construct a logic puzzle in Scratch.
Kids always struggle with word problems. Why not have them create their own word problems as an interactive poster? With Makey Makey you can help your kinesthetic learners write, answer, and share their own word problems in Scratch.
"four-year-old daughter has managed to connect the kit" ~BBC
"Rejoice!" ~Mashable
"by far the coolest Kickstarter project" ~Kotaku
"turns the whole world into a keybaord" ~Engadget
"a lot of enthusiasm and love" ~Wired
"crazy, inventive experiments" ~PC World
"We love a good diy project" ~LIfehacker
"So small, so quirky, so simple, so awesome." ~Contiki
"Mind explosion in progress." ~Indie Cookie
"turns your alphabet soup into a keyboard" ~New Scientist
"Edison meets OK Go" ~Cool Material
Order Your Kit Includes MaKey MaKey, Red USB Cable, 7 Alligator Clips, 6 Connector Wires
Who's Behind This?
Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum have both been working with invention kits for the last decade.
They are the people who brought you Drawdio and Singing Fingers, and they have been on the
Scratch programming language team in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT.
The kit is based on research at MIT Media Lab, and the circuit was designed in collaboration with Sparkfun. The original funding was Kickstarted.
ERIC'S BIO
Eric Rosenbaum is a doctoral student in the Lifelong Kindergarten group, where he creates new technologies at the intersection of
music, improvisation, play and learning. His projects include software for finger painting with sound, painting with light,
improvising with looping sounds, and creating interactive behaviors in 3D virtual worlds. His recent speaking appearances have
included TEDx Pioneer Valley, Economist Tech Frontiers, and Dust or Magic App Camp. His work has been shown at venues including
San Francisco Exploratorium, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, San Jose Tech Museum, and the OFFFmatica and
CineKid festivals.
Eric holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Technology in Education from Harvard University. He also holds a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT Media Lab, for which he developed Jots, a system to support reflective learning in the Scratch programming environment.
JAY'S BIO Jay Silver lives in Florida and is Founder/CEO of JoyLabz/MakeyMakey. Before that, he was a PhD student at MIT Media Lab where he won a Lemelson-MIT Award for Invention and Innovation.
He was Intel's first ever Maker Research Scientist. Time named one of his
inventions "Top 15 Toys for Young Geniuses." Jay has given talks at TED, PopTech, VMWorld, etc.
He has exhibited internationally at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Exploratorium, Ars Electronica, etc.
Jay studied electrical engineering at Georgia Tech where he was named Engineer of the Year. He was awarded a Gates
Scholarship to earn a master's in Internet Technology from Cambridge University. He also holds a master's in Media
Arts and Sciences from MIT Media Lab where he invented "Camera for the Invisible."
