Meet Kira: Artist, Harry Potter Fan, Animal Lover, and Coder

Kira is 13 and she lives in St. Clairsville, Ohio. She combines her artistic and coding talents with her love of animals and pop culture to make amazing animations and stories in Tynker. We sat down with her to ask her about her interests, her future, and why she codes.

What are your hobbies? I like to birdwatch, draw, any art. I volunteer at the zoo too. I work in the barn or in the main building and we just help out with the keepers. It’s really fun.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I’m thinking about being an ornithologist or a vet.

How did you get introduced to Tynker? We have an elective class at school and we can sign up for it. So [my friends and I] all signed up to do coding because we thought it’d be fun. I just started doing animations and I thought it was really cool.

Do you look at the Tynker community? Yeah, I mostly like the drawn ones.

What’s your favorite feature in Tynker? I like that you can draw your own characters and themes. It’s really cool.”

What’s your favorite project you’ve made? My Harry Potter animation.

Do you have a favorite Harry Potter book? I like Order of the Phoenix.

What are you planning to make? I’m actually working on an animation of a bird right now. It’s going to fly across the screen and I worked on the background already.

Why do you like to code? It’s fun to make animations and draw because that’s the stuff I like to do.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yeah. It’s really awesome.

What advice would you give to other kids learning to code? Sometimes it’s a little bit hard, but just keep going and it’s really fun.

Kira’s mother Julie says she’s known Kira had a special capability for art since she was three: “We knew she had talent because she would sculpt with Play-Doh and she would make animals and they would be really detailed for her age. She would make things out of pipe cleaners and just anything she could find.”

What Julie didn’t realize was that technology and coding would be yet another creative outlet for Kira. As Julie points out, “When I grew up, we didn’t have this kind of tech. We had like one computer in our school.”

For Kira, coding fits in with her other creative hobbies and allows her to make amazing animated projects about the other things she’s passionate about. Julie sums it up quite nicely: “It’s her thing. She’s artsy, she’s techy, she’s just talented.”

It was wonderful to talk to you and see your beautiful Tynker projects and drawings, Kira. Keep on coding! We can’t wait to see what’s next for you.

You can see more of Kira’s artwork here: