Artzooka! – Russian Nesting Dolls and 3D Cardboard Avatar (Full Episode)

Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:

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Hey, I’m Jeremy! Let’s get creative! Did you know that stenciling is one of the earliest forms of art? I’m talking about way back 30,000 years ago when cave people used their hands as stencils on walls to show that they had been there. We know about it because the traces of their hands are still there, and they look like this.

Let’s use the same ideas as the cave people, but we’re going to use a couple of things they didn’t have: electricity and a scanner! I’d like to present you with a picture of my hand. Well, actually, it’s where my hand used to be; I just traced my hand and then cut it out. The thing I love about empty space is that you can fill it with anything.

Let’s put this on the scanner and see what happens. I want to add some color now, so I’ll go to my trunk of supplies and see what I have in here. My laundry? How did that get in there? Now this will work if I put it right on top of my stencil. The scanner will take a picture of both the stencil and the laundry. Let’s see what happens!

Wow, my laundry never looked so good! What do you think? Let’s do another one. I’ve made a butterfly stencil. Let’s add some flowers and leaves to make this a magnificent butterfly masterpiece. I’ll put those there. These are soft twigs; I’m using soft twigs so they don’t scratch the glass.

Take your time and figure out where you want to put all your things; it’s really up to you. I have this cup full of little flowers, and I’ll just sprinkle those in other places. Okay, let’s give it a try. I’ll gently close the cover and press the button. The great thing about these scans is that you never know how they’re going to turn out. I can’t wait to see it! Ready?

Wow, it’s a scanned masterpiece! These scanned stencil pictures are beautiful, and you never really know what you’ll create until you see it. I started with a sheet of paper and traced and cut out my hand shape; that’s the stencil. I placed the stencil on the scanner and put a colorful shirt on top, then scanned it. The shirt makes a cool pattern inside my stencil.

I made a stencil in the shape of a butterfly, placed it on the scanner, and added some flowers and leaves. It makes a beautiful butterfly picture! I’d love to see the stencil scans you make. Take a picture and send it to me at the Artzooka website at artzooka.com.

Since we’ve gotten to be such good friends, I’d like you to meet my family. This is my dad, Cobb, and if anybody knows Cobb, they know he loves the deck and the sun, so I drew him out in the sun on his deck.

And this is my mom, Maxine. My mom is always running through the house, reminding me to pick up the towels and the mess that I’ve left, so I drew her running around the house doing that exact same thing.

And that’s me with a helmet on; I’m skydiving because that’s what I like to do in my spare time when I’m not making art. But check this out: I have my sister, Natasha. Natasha is always on her cell phone and never studying her books like she should be.

And here we have Domi. Domi is my big, lazy cat who just loves to lay around the house and enjoys a good scratch. This is Tai; Tai is my other cat, but he’s not so friendly. If you scratch him in the right spot, he’ll bite you!

But I also have Braveheart. Braveheart’s my little kitten, and he’s really fluffy, so I painted him nice and fluffy right there. Now inside Braveheart, there’s a little mouse and a toy because Braveheart is always eating everything in the house.

This is like secret art—art inside art inside art! Let’s find some boxes and create something special.

Now, I want to take this big box and cut it in half. Just open up the top and then the bottom. Now that it’s opened up, I can just flatten it down and cut right through the middle. There we go! I have two halves now. I’ll close the boxes up again and use a little bit of tape to tape it shut.

Now I want to cut out four strips of cardboard and tape them inside one of these boxes. I’ve cut these to be a little smaller than the inside of the box. With my tape, I’ll secure them in place.

Now look, it fits right over the edges snugly! I made these the same way and covered them in masking tape to make it easier to paint on them. Here are some I painted as monkeys. This one right here is a red monkey, and inside there, I’ve got a blue monkey, and inside the blue monkey, the yellow monkey. When you get to the smallest box, you can hide something really special, like a banana!

We have lots of great art tips at artzooka.com.

Hi, Jeremy! I’m Tatsu. I challenge you to make something out of hair accessories. Are you kidding me? Okay, let’s see what I can create!

When I play some computer games, one of my favorite parts is creating a character—mixing and matching faces, hair, and clothes. It’s super fun! But you don’t need a computer to do it; you can make your own character creator and carry it around.

Let’s make another one! I made this little character out of foam. First, with my scissors, I’m just going to cut the foam into squares. Now, these don’t have to be perfect squares, just roughly square.

Now use a little bit of cardstock about the same size as one of the squares. If I take this cardstock and fold it in half, then fold it again in half and then unfold it, it makes it a lot easier to wrap around the foam.

Now that it’s wrapped around, I can take a little bit of tape and secure that cardstock into place. After it’s taped, I need to poke a hole through the middle. I’ll use the back of my paintbrush for this.

Next, I’ll need something to hold all three squares together. This straw will be perfect! I added some tape to the end of the straw so that it slides easily through the hole.

Now I just grab the two other squares that I worked on earlier and slide them onto the straw.

To hold these into place, I’m just going to take a little bit of duct tape and wrap it around the straw. There’s one end, and then I’ll do the other. But first, I’ll make a handle out of a piece of wool.

Wrap it around the stick, and then with a strip of duct tape, wrap the duct tape around. This will make it easier to carry around when it’s finished.

Here’s one I made earlier; I painted the squares blue. Now for the best part, I get to design on these! For this character, I’m going to draw a bunch of faces.

I’m going to divide the faces into three, with the top squares as the eyes, the middle squares as the nose, and the bottom squares as the mouth. That way, when you turn them, the pictures will line up.

Let’s start off with the eyes. One big cyclops eye! Okay, now for the nose—a pig nose. And then the mouth will be a big smile with one tooth.

I can turn them to change the face! Now I want to cover all of the squares, and when I’m finished, it’ll look like this one that I did earlier.

For this one, I used marker and white paint. We can change the mouth, change the nose, and change the eyes. Each change gives our little guy a whole new look!

These are so small that you can carry them around anywhere, but you can make them any size you want. You can also use photos or a mixture of photos and drawings.

If you want to carry around your own character creator, start with a piece of foam and cut it into three squares. Wrap cardstock around the foam squares to make them sturdy and cover them with masking tape.

Poke a hole through each foam square and stick a straw through the holes; that will hold the squares together. You can paint the tape, and when it dries, draw eyes on the top square, noses on the middle square, and mouths on the bottom. That way, when you turn the squares, they line up!

There are lots of fun ideas like this on our website, artzooka.com.

And now, time for an Artzooka safety message! Remember, when signing your name on your artwork, you might want to use a small paintbrush.

For my Artzooka recycle challenge, I challenged myself to make something out of pencils and a suntan lotion bottle. I put them in a movie starring a paper bag. Come on, let’s see what I made!

Oh, and I also put in something else—a paintbrush! See if you can spot where I put it. Now sit back and enjoy Cinema Artzooka!

Here are the pencils, and here is the suntan lotion bottle. Can you guess what it’s going to be? It’s a safari bus! Now let’s see it in a movie!

Did you like the movie? I made a safari bus out of a suntan lotion bottle and some pencils. Did you spot the brush? Take another look at how I used it!

I challenge you to make something out of a suntan lotion bottle and some pencils. When you do, take a picture and email it to me at the Artzooka website, artzooka.com.

What will you create today?

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This version removes any unnecessary filler words, music cues, and applause while maintaining the essence of the content.