Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Shaw.
Richard, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Seeking a way to invest quality yet productive time with my daughters, my family and I started a news website for kids using 3D & 2D animation. After some initial local website popularity, friends asked us to make some personalized animations for their kids and others asked us to teach their children how to make simple 3D animations.
From there we started Newton Animations as an animation service for kids. We made 3D animations and offered all day summer camps in a nearby artists building. Our summer camp idea was simple…offer a truly unique 3D learning experience using advanced 3D animation systems (unavailable at any like program for kids in the country) at a lower cost than the national programs here for the summer. Our first summer camps were an enormous success. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
We then invested in certain state of the art three dimensional technologies and moved into a larger facility. We also changed the name of our school to Kids Digital U. We now offer the largest 3D printing and virtual reality labs for kids in the state and are the only program for kids to offer motion capture technology and augmented reality (for our more advanced students). We also offer the lowest equipment and teacher to student ratio by a factor of at least 2 (but usually even more). We then made our systems available for events ranging from the corporate holiday party to a bar or bat mitzvah. We are unaware of any like program in the country.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In our third year, it has been a relatively smooth road. We have always taken extensive time to be sure we hire the best people. Once hired, whether full time or part time, we invest in extensive training to be sure our staff provide our customers and students a great experience. Hence, we were not lucky to have found the right people…we made sure we developed the best people. We have also been fortunate to have great customers and students in our programs. Our technologies are years ahead of other like programs for kids and we’re always sure our staff is as far ahead of the curve.
If we had one struggle it was getting the word out about our various programs and services. Word of mouth has worked but if anything, we should have invested in better advertising and promotion.
Newton Animations – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Newton Animations and Kids Digital U offers after school, evening and weekend classes for kids in computer programming, video gaming, 3D everything and the digital arts. We also offer a one of a kind summer program we call our 3D Summer Tech Camp. In our programs kids use truly cutting-edge technologies, unavailable at any like program for kids in the country, to supplement the traditional learning experience. Kids learn out of our 2,000 s.f. state of the art animation studio (now in Needham, MA). For an idea of what students eventually do in our programs watch our video at www.kidsdigitalu.com/camps.
We also offer our advanced technologies for events ranging from the corporate holiday party to a wedding to a bar or bat mitzvah. We have developed extensive systems for our advanced technologies that can be personalized for any party or event. For example, we have developed 5 custom virtual reality experiences that can be themed with our customers personalized media like a name, logo or message. Guests believe these experiences were developed just for the event. We offer HTV Vive virtual reality, Live 3DTV (like a green screen photo booth but we produce live animated video), motion capture technology and the green screen photo booth. As best we can tell we are the only service east of the Mississippi that offers these technologies for events. We also provide a free countdown to event date website for all events for which we are engaged.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
We have had a few. First and foremost, there is nothing like watching the pride swell in a 9-year-old child as they create their very first 3D animation. We of course also humbly appreciate the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received via social media like Facebook the last few years. There are too many to mention here but they can be found on our website.
Our proudest tangible recognition was when Hulafrog of Brookline ranked us as one of the top STEM programs in the Greater Boston area. We were also ranked the best co-ed 3D summer tech camp for kids aged 11 to 18 in the state.
Contact Info:
- Address: Newton Animations/Kids Digital U
31 Thorpe Road, Suite 206
Needham, MA 02494 - Website: www.newtonanimations.com
- Phone: 781-708-1255
- Email: info@newanim.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/newtonanimations
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/NewtonAnimations
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/newtonanimation
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/NewtonAnimation
- Other: www.kidsdigitalu.com
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