Siblings create animated YouTube channel to encourage kids
Published:Friday | November 20, 2020 | 12:10 AMCecelia Campbell-Livingston/Gleaner Writer
Llqyece and Xaedhn Waisome, ages 9 and 11, are engaging YouTubers in their own special way. For Llqyece, it is all about assisting other children to improve their self-esteem.
She achieves this through her channel with engaging scripts and characters.
Her brother Xaedhn, who is more into entertainment, engages through his channel Minecraft X gaming, which has been receiving some positive feedback.
It is a family affair when it comes to technology and creativity where the family located in Old Harbour is concerned, as Llqyece said their father Orlando encouraged their interests, and when they expressed their desires in joining the social media landscape, he only had one condition.
“My brother and I always wanted to be YouTubers, but my parents always said if we could find a way to do it without showing ourselves on camera, they would let us. I went to spend some time with my grandmother in the summer and I saw my friend making Gacha videos, and I asked her how she did it,” she shared, adding that she already knew how to edit normal videos with Youcut, as her father had already taught her how to programme animations and 3D objects using Tinkercad and Scratch.
“So I did some searching on YouTube and put what I already knew how to do together with what my friend told me and what I learnt from my friend. My brother and I always wrote comic strips in our exercise books so I just wrote my scripts the same way and made my first video,” she related.
The channel, which has some great animations, Llqyece said she created them herself while collaborating with her brother, whose channel is Minecraft X Gaming for voice acting.
‘Gacha JAM’ features the adventures of animated characters created with Gacha Club and Gacha Life. In the episodes produced, characters are usually trying to solve a mystery or going on mystical adventures as they navigate life’s challenges while giving some encouragement in the mix.
Creating Content
In Minecraft X Gaming, tours and tutorials are created using Minecraft, Gacha Club and Gacha Life featuring fun and exciting engineering feats. The channel also aims to spread positive messages and to show others how to navigate some of the challenges they may face while using technology.
Llqyece will tell you that doing a channel such as theirs is not for the impatient, as she says it takes a very long time to create the animations.
“When I first started, I had to create the characters, then create the expressions, position, actions and background for every second of each event and scene in the animation and take pictures of each. A one-minute video can take more than 200 pictures. I now know how to use a green screen to create animations, which makes the process a little easier but just as much time,” she shared.
Self-esteem, she said, is an important subject for her as she said she wants children and others to feel special and believe they can do anything.
“My brother and I talk a lot about different things and whenever it seems as though it is impossible to do what we need to do, he always finds a way to make me laugh and then we figure it out. So that is why I use my channel to create videos about motivation, and trying to solve mysteries using stories,” she shared.
Their proud father, Orlando, weighing in on his children’s interest, said he feels elated in seeing the growth that both children have experienced since they started the YouTube channels in August.
“They actually found a way to make their YouTube dream come true without my influence in the process. They actually sent the videos to me on WhatsApp when they just started and I found it a little hard to believe that they actually created the videos themselves. With time, research and practice, their production quality has gotten better,” he said about their efforts.
Still, he does not leave them totally on their own, as he says while he leaves the conceptualising, writing, creating content for their own channel, everything has to be approved by him.
“They also receive feedback in the process of producing their content. They own their channels but the channels are managed by me, as adult supervision is critical when children interact with the Internet,” he said.
Orlando attributes their confidence to the fact that they were raised with the freedom to express themselves and were always encouraged to be creative and try new things.