Earlier this year, Aubrey Dahl (Advertising Art) was hired to host a painting-themed party for a group of eight-year-old girls. She prepared canvases with art for the girls to paint. While the girls were painting, Aubrey asked them questions about the colors they were using and mixing. Unsurprisingly, there were some aspects to color and color traits they weren’t familiar with but once Aubrey explained basic color theory concepts, they were able to comprehend.
This made Aubrey question why they weren’t familiar with this material in the first place and why it isn’t taught to more of an extent, as children are receptive to art, especially color. Being a visual medium, using gamification to learn about color and color theory can be enriching at a young age, especially when many children lose their love for art early on.
While digging deeper, Aubrey discovered many educational games for math, science, reading, foreign languages … but nothing extensive in the area of art and color. That’s why Aubrey created Reach My Rainbow Learning About Color.
Reach My Rainbow is an educational color and color theory game geared toward children and intended to be used in elementary art classes. The game includes 10 levels that teach different aspects of art, structured with a lesson, activity and reward.
Reach My Rainbow Levels
Level 1: Primary Colors
Level 2: Secondary Colors and Mixing Colors
Level 3: Tertiary Colors
Level 4: Value and Monochromatic Color Scheme
Level 5: Analogous Color Scheme
Level 6: Complementary Color Scheme
Level 7: Neutral Tones and Brown
Level 8: Warm and Cool Colors
Level 9: Create a Color Palette
Level 10: Put it All Together
The lessons teach concepts, and the activities allow children to test the concepts they just learned. Each level ends with a reward coloring page, where children use what they’ve just learned to color their own picture. The game has visual, auditory, and kinesthetic aspects to enhance learning and stimulate the senses.
The art design and visuals in the game are meant to be simple yet cute, appealing to children.
Aubrey is excited to get Reach My Rainbow into classrooms by licensing it to elementary schools, stating, “it can help save money and still be fun because they can say, ‘we’re going to art class now, go to the computers.’” In future iterations, Aubrey is interested in making lessons to be more in-depth, and possibly expand to include middle and high school versions.
Discover your inner artist with one of UAT’s digital arts degrees.
Team:
Aubrey Dahl
Contributions by:
Amanda Grose, Robotics & Embedded Systems
John Leddon, Advertising Art
Alexis Serpas, Network Security
Jaime Zamora, Virtual Reality
Chirstopher Parness, Digital Video
Jonathon Sherwood, Game Design