It’s time to meet a person of many pencils at our NSCAD art camps, as we look to our next installment of Inspiring Instructors! This week, we turn the spotlight onto Kyle Bridgett: illustrator, animator, and one of the best youth instructors in the city!
A graduate of NSCAD University, Kyle has hit the ground running since graduation in building himself to be a multi-talented creative professional. With his skills in drawing (and a great sense of humour), Kyle has become a published cartoonist, an established art instructor, a freelance illustrator & graphic designer, all within just a few years. With NSCAD Extended Studies, Kyle has been teaching his skills to a variety of youth camps and adult courses at NSCAD art camps. Starting off with sharing his passion for comics & cartooning, Kyle weaves in lessons about comic layout, GIF animation, do-it-yourself zine-making, the power of collaborative illustrations, board game design logistics, story-crafting, and much more. From his youngest ages to his most mature students, Kyle crafts exciting exercises designed to broaden the mind and tickle the funny bone. His classes have gained notice around town, with their intricately illustrated promotional posters around the city’s public spaces and within the past year, he was featured on a CBC segment to discuss the advent of doodling in conjunction with his Doodling for Adults course.
Besides being an instructor with us at our NSCAD art camps, Kyle works (in what spare time he has!) as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. Around the HRM, Kyle is a regular contributor to Good Robot, a north-end brewing company with a focus on the fun in life & community building endeavours. It only makes sense that Kyle, with his quick wit, finds so much work with them designing new brew labels, special menus, graphics, and even with the graphics on their colourful delivery van. Outside of Canada, Kyle is a regular contributor to MAD Magazine with his comic feature, “Humour While You Wait.”
With NSCAD art camps, Kyle has created our first thank-you canvas tote-bags, a unique temporary tattoo for this year’s Summer camps students, and (to our great excitement!) a new comic!
“It Came From Boxtown!” is a free, 4-page comic detailing the adventures possible in our summer camps! With two more comics to come down the line, this first print details the ever-popular Boxtown camp instructed by Patrick Burgomaster. The camps themselves are already half-full, but it will be something to think of this year or next, and we look forward to the next installment featuring Jenn Carson’s Mural I & Mural II camps for older youth. “It Came From Boxtown!” will be available free around town at all Halifax Public Libraries, Strange Adventures in Halifax & Dartmouth, and as a free download from our website. With activities and designed to be coloured, it’s got something in it for everyone!
While some of Kyle’s camps for this year are at capacity, there’s still room in Advanced Cartoons, Comics & Doodles (August 20-24), Comics & Zines (August 13-17), Board Game Design (August 7-10), and Comics & Zines (July 30-August 3) for ages 9-18. The comic-based classes will also have the invitation to table with him at this year’s DCAF (Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival), hosted by Strange Adventures at Alderney Landing on Sunday August 19th.
Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
We look forward to seeing what fun exercises he comes up with next for this summer, as well as his upcoming Fall lineup of classes! Besides Kyle’s classes, we have many other new, exciting classes on offer for our Summer including Science Fiction with Laura de Palma, Abstract Art with Lisa MacPherson, and all things sewing with Linnet Finley! Registration is available online or by calling our Finance Office at 902 494 8185.
Stay tuned for our next Inspiring Instructor blog post!