Disney gives Mac a chance
It's fascinating to watch my six year old soon-to-be stepson Jason draw, color, and paint. While the kid understands how plenty of real world objects look, he's most interested in drawing them in more abstract ways, emphasizing their color and their position, more than an accurate representation of their shape.
Which makes Disney's new Magic Artist Studio perfect for him and all the other Jason's out there. And thanks to a serious lack of the platform myopia that other kidware vendors evince, Disney sells Magic Artist Studio on a hybrid CD for both Mac and Windows. One million iMacs and counting does have a good affect on the Mac software market, doesn't it? Too bad other software vendors can't seem to do the new math.
This Disney software turns your kid's iMac (or PC) into an electronic canvas. With it, your kids can draw with 3D art tools, learn the basics of animation, and create animated musical scenes using their favorite Disney characters.
Unlike many kid drawing programs that emphasize the drawing process, Magic Artist Studio emphasizes your child's creativity, which is why it's a no-brainer for running on the iMac.
Besides drawing and painting, the program lets your kids import photos of their friends and family members to include in any of the scenes, sketchbooks and musical slide shows they want to create.
Magic Artist Studio works for most ages, although your kids will need some basic graphical interface and mousing skills. Once they do, they can make the program create, print and save and then e-mail their artwork to their friends.
The program includes a set of nontraditional tools that take advantage of the computer interface. Your kids can use the Image Tube to add 3D images to their canvases, or the Wild Art Tools to draw and paint with markers, chalk, crayons, a paintbrush, pencil, a spraycan, or even with colored whipcream! And you never have to clean the kitchen table when you're done.
Disney has organized the software into four basic categories of functions: create, learn, animate and print. With the create tools, your kids draw and paint with 3D tools that they can customize, including new special effects like Drippy, Globby, Spatter paints and others. The create tools also offer a number of animated images that can be squirted from the image tube or spraycan.
The learn mode lets your kids follow interactive online lessons so they learn to use the Doodlemorph tool (I am not making this up) which helps them create their on onscreen animations. Each drawing, painting or animation can then be saved to disk or e-mailed or printed.
The animate section lets them set their custom cartoons to music. With 300 different dancing stamps of their favorite Disney characters, they can really embellish their work. They can choose from fifteen different musical styles, including rock, swing, island and classical.
The print abilities of Magic Artist Studio can produce hard copy of their artwork on any color inkjet or laser printer. Your kids can even print out copies of their work that they can color the old fashioned way.
The software comes on a single CD-ROM for both Mac OS and Windows 95/98. On the Windows side it requires a Pentium 133MHz or faster, 32MB RAM, a Quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive, 16-bit sound, 256-color DirectX-compatible video card, 800x600 color graphics monitor, and a Windows-compatible mouse. For Mac kids you need an iMac, G3 or faster Mac running System 8.1 or later, with 32MB RAM, a Quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive, a 256-color DirectX-compatible video card, and 800x600 color graphics monitor. In my tests, the Mac version outperformed the Windows version when used on comparable iron, making me think that the digital gurus at Disney did a bit more tweaking on the Mac side.
Besides the software that comes on disc, Disney also offers a free Website to enhance your kid's experience with the product. The Website offers additional projects for your kids to try, plus a place where they can preview an online version of the program before you buy. Click here to see the site.
Disney's Magic Artist Studio won't turn your kids into the next Walt Disney. But it will give their imaginations a chance to run wild on the screen as they produce reams of cool animated art. That alone is worth the paltry price of admission. And thanks to an enlightened Disney Interactive, your price of admission is applicable on your iMac.