Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

by Ken Denmead

  As they do in movies, moving from a long shot to a medium shot to a close-up can help drive home a dramatic or comic statement.

  Never forget that a panel without dialogue is one of the most powerful comic beats. Feeding the punch line in one panel, and then following it up with the identical panel sans words, or even better, having a character react directly to the reader (called breaking the fourth wall), can be comedy gold.

  In the end, depending upon the subject matter and the tools you use, your final product may look something like this (I went with an imagined conversation with iTunes here):

  The best thing about this technique is how easy it can be to build up a store of images—close-ups of different expressions, or generic interactions between regular characters—to the point where you won’t always need to shoot new images when you come up with a new idea. After a while, you’ll be able to simply pull from your archive of shots to build new strips. In this way, any time a new idea hits you and your kid, the payoff can be very quick (while teaching a valuable lesson about planning ahead and being prepared for the future). Plus, you know, it’s fun.

  The Coolest Homemade Coloring Books

  From the moment most children are old enough to pick up a crayon, coloring is a creative pastime they enjoy. And please take special note of that word: pastime. How many times, on a rainy day at home perhaps or when you know they are stuck in a waiting room with you, have you been desperate to NOT let your kids be babysat by a video game machine or the television? Coloring can be an absorbing, constructive, imaginative way of passing the time—even for older children. And it can be just as portable as any Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable (PSP).

  But the selection of available coloring books is always either bound by current pop culture or skewed to younger children, and can put older kids off. What if you could make your own coloring books for your kids, filled with images for them to color that come from things they actually love and will get absorbed in? Well, you can, and pretty easily, too. Here’s how.

  Because there are levels to artistic ability and interest, I’ll show you two different coloring pages you can make. First, the classic dot-to-dot, then coloring sheets. They are all made from images you can find online or scan into your computer from sources at home.

  DOT-TO-DOT COLORING PAGE

  To start, you have to pick the image you want to turn into the coloring page. For dot-to-dots, it’s going to be a lot easier to select simple images, though if you’re patient and want more detail, you can go for the gusto with more detailed pictures. But dot-to-dots are great for younger kids who are learning about staying within the borders. And they love to be amazed by what they can create by drawing a series of lines between dots.

  For this example, we’re going really simple—an image of the sigil of the Rebel Alliance.

  (Advisory: If you are reasonably experienced with graphics software and know what a layer is, you can skip down a couple of paragraphs to the one that starts “Select a pen . . .”.)

  Assuming you’re a geek, we are going to figure you have some manner of graphics software, probably for touching up pictures from your digital camera. Common (and pretty good) examples of such software include Photoshop Elements (the cheaper, easier-to-use version of the industry standard Photoshop) available on Mac or PC; Pixelmator for the Mac; or GIMP, which works on PC, Mac, or Linux and is FREE FREE FREE. Maybe you haven’t played around with the software that much. If that’s the case, here’s a quick lesson about the first feature you’re going to use.

  A layer is a standard concept in image editing software. Conceptually, it’s very simple. Imagine if you took a printed picture and laid a piece of tracing paper over it, and then copied the features by hand on that tracing paper. Well, a layer is just like tracing paper, only it works digitally on the computer, and you can have as many of them as you want.

  STEP 1: For this project, you open your base image in the editing software of your choice. Then you add a layer. Most of these pieces of software have a menu actually called “Layer” from which you can “Add a Layer.” Once you’ve done that, there is a perfectly transparent layer of digital tracing paper on top of your image, upon which you can now trace, without affecting the original picture.

  STEP 2: Select a pen or pencil tool and a fairly small brush size to make your dots with. Draw black dots all around the edges of the image, at relatively even intervals. Straight lines need only one dot at either end. Curves need more so that, when they are connected, they will better re-create the curve.

  STEP 3: These programs should have a separate control window that shows all the layers in the current project. From this window, you can now “turn off” the layer with the original image on it so that you see only the dots.

  STEP 4: If you want to go all the way, you can also use the program’s text feature to add numbers next to each dot to give your artist a sequence to follow. Or you can just save this file and print as many of them as your kids want to color, letting them be creative and decide how to connect the dots.

  COLORING BOOK PAGES

  Obviously, older kids and those with more advanced coloring skills are going to be hankering for something a bit more challenging than connect-the-dots. What’s great is that these graphics programs have filters that let you kick out coloring pages by the ream with only a couple of clicks. They require even less work than the dot-to-dots.

  Pick an image. For this example, I used a snapshot I took of my classic Nauga (www.nauga.com/promoitems_nauga.html) in my office. I opened the image in Pixelmator and then used “Filter-Stylize-Line Overlay” to automatically find the edges in the image and drop everything else out, making a perfect coloring sheet (there are settings you can tweak to get it “just right”).

  In Photoshop Elements, the process is nearly as easy. Open the image, and use “Filter-Stylize-Find Edges.” Then use “Enhance-Convert to Black-and-White” to drop out the colors, and you have much the same effect.

  In GIMP, you can try “Colors-Desaturate,” then “Filters-Edge Detect-Neon” and “Colors-Invert” to get a similar effect. You may need to play with some settings to get an optimal result (and you can save those settings for future uses). GIMP is just as powerful as the other programs in many ways, but it is not quite as user-friendly, so there’s a bit more of a learning curve.

  Once you have the technique down, you can whip these out en masse and build your kids (or get your kids to build) their own coloring books, using images they find online (Google Image Search is excellent for this, though make sure you keep an eye out for inappropriate content; or try the Web sites for the cartoon shows they like—Disney or Nickelodeon) or scans from other books or sources.

  One other way to do this—with slightly less creativity (and therefore less geek factor) but without the need for special software—is the Coloring Page Maker at the Crayola Crayons Web site: http://play-zone.crayola.com/play-zone/index.htm.

  Create the Ultimate Board Game

  In an age when the video game seems to be king, it’s interesting to notice that when you walk into any mega-mart toy section, you still find whole walls devoted to the board game in all its varieties. Everyone still loves the low-tech joy of Life, or Risk, Chutes and Ladders, or other classic board games.

  For many (including me), one of the best board games was Mouse Trap (not to be confused with the Broadway play), where you got to build a homemade Rube Goldberg device to catch a plastic mouse. If you didn’t play it on a perfectly flat, level table, it was often a challenge to make it work just right, but when it did—magic!

  But when you look at any board game, when you strip it down to its core, there are elements that are common to them all: playing pieces that move a number of spaces based upon random number generation; special spaces that do interesting things; special cards that grant a boon, or curse the players; a final space to be reached representing the end of a harrowing journey. In short: adventure. Dress up the structure of the game in whatever outfit you l
ike—the struggle to reach the top of a path (Chutes and Ladders), the simulation of a modern life (Life), the quest for world domination (Risk)—most of the basics are still there.

  So, given the hacking, maker spirit of the geek, what’s to stop us from making our own board games? Nothing, I say!

  Buildrz (my name for the generic game) is an open-source, build-it-yourself board game for GeekDads to build and play with their kids. The point is, rather than running to the store and buying a game based on someone else’s ideas, you can take the idea of a board game and add your own themes and imagination to make it your own.

  The idea of a board game is very simple: It is a journey from one place to another, based upon some randomness (dice roll or spinner), with challenges (tasks to overcome, strategies applied against or by your opponents), all dressed up in a motif or idiom to evoke the imagination. The Buildrz game deconstructs the board game to those bare bones and lets you create your own theme and rules.

  NOTE: Full instructions with printable boards and cards in various file formats are available on the Web site for this book, www.geekdadbook.com. There are also forums where players can suggest their own modifications to the game.

  What’s most important about the Buildrz game is what you do with it. At its basic level, it’s a fun little game you can throw together with parts you already have, and spend a few enjoyable hours playing. But it can also be a project for the whole family to build together and come up with new themes, new cards, new tweaks to the game play that make it all your own. Maybe it will even become a family tradition of yours: You’ll take it along on trips to the family cabin or bring it out for entertainment when the power goes out. Then it’s no longer my game, it’s yours.

  BUILDING THE GAME

  First you need to make the game board and playing cards. To make a small board, you could draw the board out on an 11-by-17-inch piece of paper, though that might be tight. It would be better to tape a number of sheets of paper together, or use butcher paper, to make a larger board. Alternately, you could print the board out from the file available at www.geekdadbook.com to a very large size, broken out onto multiple sheets of paper, and tape them together.

  HELPFUL IDEAS: A pool table, Ping-Pong table, card table, or other large working space is a good place to set up a large-scale version of the game. One excellent resource for large sheets of paper is construction projects. Old construction drawings have the plans printed on one side, and blank white spaces on the other, which make for great drawing. Using a yardstick or other long straight-edge is handy for segmenting the board.

  Then you draw the following on the board: A Home circle in the center of the board

  Around that is the Inner River. This is a metaphorical river, and depending upon the theme you choose for your game, it could be a force field, a gorge to be spanned, or the mystic space between worlds to be bridged.

  A ring around the Inner River

  On the ring is the Inner Path, with twenty-four spaces, four brown bridge Abutments to the Home circle, and four brown bridge Abutments from the Outer Path. Four of the spaces on the Inner Path are Toll Spaces (shown in yellow), and four are Card Spaces (red or green), which are explained in the rules.

  Around this is the Outer River.

  Around the Outer River is the Outer Path, comprised of thirty-six spaces, including a yellow Toll Space adjacent to each of the outer bridge Abutments, and eight (red or green) Card Spaces.

  From the midpoint of each quadrant of the Outer Path are the Trails that lead to each player’s starting space. There are thirty spaces along each player’s Trail to the Outer Path around the Outer River, including ten (red or green) Card Spaces. This is a guideline number, based upon the idea that the roughly average roll of a six-sided die will be a three (actually 3.5), making for about ten turns to get from the Start to the Outer Path. If you want to use a different die, or make a quicker or longer game, you can play with these numbers as you like. Also note, if you have more or less than four players, you could build a board with more or less than four Trails. Just keep in mind the symmetry that helps create the balanced game play.

  Every third space along each Trail is a Card Space, where, if you land, you pick up a card from one of the two decks. The spaces alternate green for Defense Cards and red for Offense Cards.

  There are also numbered Number Spaces along each player’s Trail that will play a part in special moves during the game. Counting from the first space on the Trail just off the Outer Path, and working back toward the Start of each Trail, put “1” next to the first space, “2” next to the fourth space, “3” next to the ninth space, “4” next to the sixteenth space, “5” next to the twenty-fifth space (notice a pattern?), and “6” next to Start. Do this for each Trail. Make a Deck Space on either side of the board for the Offense and Defense cards.

  Helpful Hints

  When you draw a large-scale board, it’s a good idea to do everything in pencil first, using rulers and water-bottle caps for most of the lines and shapes. Then go back over everything with a black Sharpie/Biro, and finally color the spaces in per the directions. If you print it out, it’s just a matter of lining things up and taping the pages together. Another cool idea is to use cloth pens and draw the board on a white bedsheet that can be folded up and reused.

  Now you need the game cards—red for Offense, green for Defense. These can be printed on paper and cut out, or written on 3-by-5-inch index cards, and a colored dot placed on the backs to identify which kind they are. The following are suggested cards and quantities, but once again, you can tweak the game to your own style and idiom of game play by adjusting the cards.

  Offense Cards (Red)

  Defense Cards (Green)

  The cards are the place where the game can be most significantly customized. If you come up with a theme for the game (say, space travel), then the cards can help portray that. “Move Ahead” becomes “Warp Ahead.” “Take an Extra Turn” changes into “Time Jump to Your Next Turn.” That sort of thing. And new rules and strategies can be added. How about a card that transfers ownership of a bridge or causes it to be removed?

  PLAYING THE GAME

  Now that you’ve built the thing, you’re just about ready to play. Mix the cards up and put them on their respective places. Each player should pick a playing piece. Have fun with these! Use action figures or, especially good, LEGO minifigs. Make sure your LEGO bricks are in a bowl for picking, and don’t place it too close to the snacks, just to be safe.

  The Rules

  THE GOAL:

  Be the first Buildr to cross both rivers and make your way to the Home space.

  PLAY PIECES REQUIRED:

  A token for each player—may be a toy, minifig, action figure

  One six-sided die

  A bowl of assorted LEGO pieces (using all smaller pieces will make for a longer, more challenging game) that will be used to build the Bridges to carry you Home

  GENERAL CONCEPTS:

  High roll on the die for first player. Play continues to the left.

  Each player starts in a corner and travels down his own Path toward the Outer Trail, based on die rolls.

  Once at the Outer Trail, pieces move clockwise around the ring.

  DESCRIPTION OF A TURN:

  1. Player declares his Buildr action—the player may take a LEGO piece from the bowl, add a piece to a current build, set a complete bridge if he is on a Toll Space, or add a piece to repair an already set bridge. He may also choose to pass on his Buildr action.

  2. Player may play a Buildr card from his hand, if desired. Only one card may be played per turn. If a card is played, either for the player or against another player, its instructions are now followed.

  3. Player rolls the die, then moves the number of spaces indicated, either up his Path toward the Outer Trail, or clockwise around the Outer or Inner Trail. Player takes a Buildr card if he lands on a Card Space, and adds it to his hand.

  4. Player may play a Buildr card from hi
s hand, if he did not do so in step 2. If a card is played, its instructions are now followed.

  4. Turn ends, and play moves to the player on the left.

  BUILDR CARDS:

  Buildr cards may be played either before the die roll or after the player moves in a turn.

  Buildr cards may be played for the player himself or played on another player.

  The instructions on a Buildr card must be immediately followed by the player who draws it.

  Buildr cards that indicate “Move Forward” or “Move Back” will work at any time.

  The “Take an Extra Turn” card causes the card recipient to take another turn immediately following the end of his current active turn (if one is active) or at the end of his next turn (if he is not in the middle of a turn when the card is played).

  The “Move to the Next # Space” card works only on players who are still on their Trails.

  The “Move to the Previous # Space” card works on any player at any time. Players on the Outer or Inner Path will be sent back to the #1 space at the end of their Trails.

  The “Pick/Add a Build Piece” card effectively grants an additional, immediate Buildr phase for the recipient. He may pick another piece from the pot, add a piece to a current bridge build, or add a piece to an already set bridge. He may not set a bridge.