Program teaches youngsters about science, art connection

MONTCLAIR - Animated movies took on a whole other dimension to a group of local students on Monday.

With the help of Ontario-Montclair School District school officials, parents of GATE students hosted a day of summer science enrichment activities with a lecture by Cal State San Bernardino biology professor Stuart Sumida.

"I thought that you just drew pictures, but I didn't know that you needed any science and math to do it," said Haley Kurz, sixth-grader at Buena Vista Arts-integrated Elementary School.

Sumida, a frequent anatomical consultant to movie studios, spoke to the students about the connection between science and art.

For an hour, five students from the district's two magnet schools - Buena Vista and Vina Danks Middle School - listened to Sumida talk about bone structure, digestive system, body weight, dinosaurs, body movement and how all those elements factor into how artists draw characters.

"What you eat determines your body shape, where your eyes are, where your feet are and how you eat," Sumida said after describing animals who are carnivores and herbivores.

Parents of GATE students in the spring-formed Parents Like Us, or PLUS, and have organized a series of enrichment activities for students at the two schools as well as the summer activities.

Students looked a series of photos from the movies Sumida worked on, including "Beauty and the Beast," "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," "Brother Bear," "Tarzan" and "How to Train Your Dragon."

"While we don't know the science of a dragon, we know where to start," Sumida said.

Figuring out muscle system as a skeleton helped in creating characters that were hybrids of two or more animals.

"Even when we build a dragon or a flying horse, we always look at things that we know about, and that's biology," Sumida said.