Kids Craft Cool Comics, With Seagate’s Help

By Jennifer Macapagal

It’s no secret that kids love comic books. But what many of these young readers don’t know is that modern comic book creators depend on computers, software and storage to bring their amazing superheroes and other colorful characters to life on a page.

Seagate Singapore employees spent a recent afternoon with children from the Henderson Student Care Center, an aftercare facility for children from low-income families, showing the kids how tech tools help fuel creativity.

Seagate volunteer SayLye Yong looks over a student’s digital artwork.

The workshop, held earlier this month at the Woodlands facility, was organized to introduce students to digital platforms for creating comic art. Instead of using pens and paper, the kids utilized tablets and Adobe Photoshop software to learn basic digital drawing, sketching and coloring techniques.

“The children were very excited, and they had a great time creating and coloring their own cartoons,” said Michelle Wang, a senior process engineer. “The session also helped them to express themselves creatively through their character designs.”

Each year, Seagate’s team in Singapore holds a year-end party for the kids from Henderson. This year, Seagate’s volunteers decided to organize a digital-comics workshop — something both fun and educational.

“The workshop was an opportunity for the children to experiment and re-imagine comic art with the flexibility of digital technology,” said TeckHuei Chee, SVP, Recording Media Operations.

Added Vimala Ragavan, a teacher from Henderson: “It was a really empowering and enriching activity for the children. We believe digital literacy is also an essential skill they should develop for their future prospects.”

The children were introduced to Seagate products during the workshop, in which they learned how hard drives are used for organizing, backing up and accessing digital files like their comic art. Henderson Student Care Center also received a donation of a 500GB Backup Plus portable drive to store the children’s artwork. Three students also were awarded gift vouchers as prizes for the best-colored character designs.