Shaun the Sheep wants to get kids coding
Aardman Animations – the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep – and Nominet Trust have launched a national competition aimed at teaching programming skills to children.
Shaun’s Game Academy encourages young people to build online games based on the adventures of the popular TV character, using the programming platform Scratch.
The winning coder will be invited to spend the day at Aardman Animations to have their creation developed further by the studio’s games team.
Aardman says that Shaun’s Game Academy aims to encourage and capture the creativity and skills of young people – reaching computer games lovers as well as those who may not have had any experience of coding before.
The competition, which runs until September, will give young users a suite of characters, backgrounds and effects from the stop-motion animation series to create simple games with Scratch.
Nominet Trust CEO Annika Small said: “Children are eager to make their own projects online, but many don’t have the opportunity to do so. Combining digital making with young people’s everyday interests is a great way to create digital activities that are relevant and fun. This is why we are really excited by this partnership with Aardman Animations and the launch of Shaun’s Games Academy.”
