Digital Monkey School

There’s a world where monsters are storming a castle and one person is trapped within the walls. Nearby, in another world, a wizard dances on the shore of a beach. As distant as these worlds—and an infinite number of other worlds—might seem, they both came into being at Digital Monkey School. Founded by Greg Orduyan in 2006, Digital Monkey offers all-ages classes on creating 3-D, 2-D, and animated art on a computer. A veteran of the video-game industry for more than 15 years, Orduyan was a central figure in the design of such PS2 staples as Frequency—a predecessor to _Guitar Hero—and _Silent Hill 2. Elementary-aged children and older can sign up for the digital-painting course, where they learn to apply lessons from traditional painting when working with a stylus and tablet, and an introduction to video-game development, which covers basic programming and financial planning in gold-coin-based economies.