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Could you be a Zookster?
Having taken control of the TV remote yesterday afternoon in order to forestall arguments, and find a programme that suited the tastes of the whole family I happened across a programme on the BBC named ‘Bamzooki’. “Yea, I like this” my 7yr old declared. Dubious, but openminded, I stopped flicking and let it roll.
For the uninitiated Bamzooki is a children’s programme in which two teams of youngsters try to predict which ‘Zooks’ - computer generated creatures - will most efficiently complete a series of obstacle courses. As a televisual experience the programme has limited appeal, other than it allows the family to place ’side bets’ on their favourite ‘Zooks’ and therefore holds the collective interest in the same way as RoboWars might. The really interesting part came when we took up the invitation of the overly enthusiastic presenter to go to the Bamzooki website and create our own ‘Zooks’. Now I don’t normally like cluttering up my computer with spurious applications, but I couldn’t let the kids down, so we downloaded the ‘Zook-Kit’ and within 10 minutes we were taking our first tentative steps towards becoming ‘Zooksters’.
Resisting the offer to download the ‘handy guide’ Our initial attempts to create a working/moving ‘Zook’ were clumsy, but hilarious all the same. In fact the kids were having such a good time that Daddy managed to slope off to the pub to watch the second half of the football, in the sound knowledge that the kids would be entertained for an hour. On return I investigated the ‘Zook-Kit’ and ‘Bamzooki’ site in more detail, and what a powerful and engaging offering it is. The Kit allows the user to create an infinite array of creatures, explore and refine their movement, and render them in a variety of colours and patterns. It is then possible to put them through their paces in private before uploading them to the website where they can enter leagues in order to challenge other ‘Zookster’s’ creations in a variety of competitions. The kids might have to take a back-seat next weekend as Daddy creates the ultimate sprinting ‘Zook’, however if the kids want to take their next steps towards becoming expert 3D special effect animators then Daddy might have to go down the pub again!
Brilliant! Very funny - unfortunately Chilean Internet Cafes aren´t keen on downloads of ´Zook-kit´:-((