WR Rod Streater hosted children from CoachArt at Disney Interactive's office in Palo Alto, Calif., through The Rod Streater Foundation and his "Where's Streater? Catch him Here, There and Everywhere" program.
Disney Interactive is the digital entertainment part of The Walt Disney Company and is the home to the artists and developers of Disney's popular Disney Infinity game and Disney's mobile games and apps. The guests from CoachArt received the opportunity to tour the facility and learn how to draw characters from some of the company's artists, like Olaf from the movie Frozen.
CoachArt is a non-profit that brings together volunteers, like Streater, with chronically ill children. Streater has been working with Michael Montes from CoachArt since 2014.
Streater wanted to expand his reach with CoachArt and invited the organization to team up with his foundation to visit Disney Interactive. "My foundation is growing; it's on the fifth event," said Streater. "I'm reaching out to kids less fortunate, I'm trying to give back and create different activities to give back to them in various fields like art, technology. I want to create fun activities."
Spending time learning at Disney Interactive was a big deal for the wide receiver. "I love art. I'm in school trying to get my bachelor's in game art design and I thought it would be cool to learn from the best – Disney – how to code, how to do a little bit of illustration and that's what we're going to be doing today," said Streater. "We'll go through a little bit of animation, how to illustrate and learn from the best."
The kids from CoachArt and Streater enjoyed the chance to experience the creation of the games they play. "It's amazing to see the process of designing a game – the art, technology, storyline," said Streater. "Just to see the process, all how it comes together, is pretty impressive."
After a tour of the facility, they sat down to learn how to draw Olaf. One of the Disney Interactive artists took the group step-by-step through how they create characters for their games.
Streater hopes that bringing the kids to Disney Interactive opened their eyes to different opportunities in their future. "I see a lot of kids have a lot of questions," explained Streater. "As a little kid, I always wanted to know the process of how to create a video game and things like that and what went into it, so I think it's very important for kids to see at an early age so they can start getting experience now. If this is what they're into, they'll have a head start on a lot of kids."
To learn more about CoachArt visit www.coachart.org
