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| Crayons, Paints, And Computers |
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Family Computing August 1994 • Vol.5 Issue 8 |
Crayons, Paints, And Computers | ||
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Give a child some paper, a box of crayons, a few paints, and watch his or her imagination go to work. Children love to paint and draw. Now they can put their creativity into high gear with a computer and art software programs designed especially for children. Some general creativity programs include painting and drawing features. And there are full -fledged draw and paint programs with lots of great activities. Most draw and paint programs for children include sound effects; you'll get the most out of them if your computer has sound capabilities, but they also work just fine without sound. Here's a sample of what these programs offer.  An Artist In The Works Kid Works 2 from Davidson & Associates Inc. is a creativity tool for children ages 4 to 10 that combines writing and painting activities. Children write and illustrate their own stories with this DOS program. The Story Illustrator is a mini-paint program. Creating takes place at the main screen, where there are shelves full of tools for painting, drawing, and creating, and all kinds of colors, designs, and textures to choose from. There's also a picture box where children can store their creations. The tools are neatly arranged in a wooden bookcase. There's a pencil, a spray bottle, a paint can, an ink dropper, a ruler, and an eraser. Shape tools such as circles and boxes let children place objects on the screen. The Typewriter adds letters, numbers, and symbols. Other tools let children be creative. The Color Cycling Tool changes colors every time an object is put on the screen. The Mirror Tool makes mirror images of objects. There are also tools for making changes in pictures. The Marquee Tool highlights a box-shaped area that can be moved around the screen, cut, or copied. The Vacuum Tool clears the entire screen. To get rid of changes you've made, use the Undo Tool. The Coloring Book offers some picture backgrounds to work with, such as a farm, a city, a volcano, and outer space. Children can color in the backgrounds or add new shapes and designs of their own. The tools at the bottom of the screen let children select lines, patterns, stamps, paintbrushes, and colors. There are different line widths to choose from. Stamp shapes can be used as stamps or paintbrushes. There are hearts, swirls, musical notes, arrows, chairs, bicycles, clocks, moons, lips, and more. Stamps are displayed in boxes. Select a stamp and click it onto the screen. Drag it to make a trail of stamps. Click on the brush to use a stamp as a paintbrush, dragging it across the screen. Sixteen patterns, including bricks, lines, and grids, add texture to a picture. There is an assortment of crayons to add and change colors. Whenever a tool, stamp, pattern, or color is selected, a ping, thunk, or swish accompanies it. When items are attached to the screen, you can actually hear them. The Vacuum sounds like the one you have at home. The Spray Bottle makes a spraying sound, the Color Wheel makes a whirling noise, and when you add paint to the screen, you can hear it pouring or splashing. Kid Works 2 is not just a paint program. It also enhances children's writing skills by letting them create stories. But the program's Story Illustrator has all the features and fun of a regular paint program. Kid Works 2 Price: $59.95 Davidson & Associates Inc. (800) 545-7677 The Artist In Every Child Children will have fun discovering their artistic abilities with McZee, the friendly character in Fine Artist for Windows from Microsoft Corp. McZee takes you to the Magic Museum in Imaginopolis, where there are painting and drawing activities for children ages 8 to 14. In the Lobby, you decide whether to start painting on your own, make a comic strip, a button, or a sticker, create a Picture Show, learn some drawing tricks, or work with projects you've already started. Click on McZee's bag of tricks to find the magic wand, portfolio, and storybook. The magic wand makes exciting things happen on-screen, such as entertaining animations and sound effects. The portfolio contains lists of your projects and the activities you perform while working with the program. The storybook tells the story of McZee and his friends, Imaginopolis, and the Magic Museum. Check out the Gallery while you're on the first floor. Look at paintings, rearrange them, get rid of any of them, or take a closer look at one in the Workshop. Back in the Lobby, travel to other floors on the elevator, use the fireman's pole, or click on the level inside the diagram of the museum in the corner. Start painting in the Painting Studio on level two. McZee and his friend Maggie offer tips and instructions. Each of the tools you'll use has its own set of options. There are also sets of colors and patterns to choose from. The Paintbrush lets you paint with all sizes of circles and squares. Fill in an area with colors and patterns using the Paint Bucket. The Wallpaper roll contains patterns of clouds, balloons, fish, and more. Add color by outlining, swapping patterns, or using the Surprise fill option. To add stickers, use the Sticker Picker. There are rolls of stickers to choose from, or make your own. There are even stickers that move. You can watch a snake slither or a rhinoceros rampage across the screen. The Sound Picker attaches sounds to objects. Choose from musical notes, dinosaur calls, or farm animal sounds. Or, if you have a microphone, record your own sounds. Use the Word tool to put words in a picture. Make words appear in special shapes, or use comic balloons. Place them above someone's head to reveal what they are thinking or saying. The Undo Egg reverses the last change you made. The Vacuum gets rid of anything on-screen. Options let you vacuum paint or stickers, spit out what is in the Vacuum, or even remove sounds. The Vacuum can also be used to copy and move objects. Transformers let you move, stretch, shrink, flip, or rotate stickers, words, and much more. There are Cool Drawing Tools to help children. For example, add a grid to make drawing easier, put in a construction line or drawing guideline, or set a vanishing point to add a three-dimensional effect. The third floor is the Project Workshop, where you and Maggie make comic strips, buttons, stickers, and Picture Shows. To make comics, buttons, or stickers, you'll go back to the Painting Studio. You can design your own comic strip or work with a sample. Maggie can help you come up with ideas if you do not already have one. Use the tools to draw up to four panels. Maggie will help you add words, backgrounds, and characters, and use other tools to fill in each panel. Use the same tools to work on stickers and buttons. Stickers, buttons, and comics can be printed. You'll even find out how to make the back of a button so you can wear it! Making a Picture Show is a little different. You get to put a bunch of your pictures together to make a movie. Open the Portfolio to retrieve pictures and place them on the Picture Show screen. Add special effects and sounds between pictures, and put captions with pictures. When the Picture Show is finished, you can play it back. For some handy drawing tricks, go to level four. Learn the basics, or make things look three- dimensional. Maggie will show you her most useful tricks and let you practice them yourself. You'll learn to outline an object and then fill in the details. You can also make flat images jump out of the page with three-dimensional effects. Fine Artist is sprinkled with sound effects and animation. Hear a mouse squeak when you click the Mouse Hole. Watch a bird fly across the screen while it peeps. McZee himself may even pop out of the screen every now and then to entertain children while they paint and draw. Fine Artist Price: $64.95 Microsoft Corp. (800) 426-9400 Fun With Pictures Broderbund Software Inc. has a paint and picture -show program for children ages 3 to 12 called Kid Pix 2, which is available for DOS and Windows. Kid Pix 2 contains tools, colors, and rubber stamps for making pictures. The Wacky Pencil and Wacky Brush are for drawing and painting. Click on a color from the palette and draw or paint with it. Drag the pencil or paintbrush across the screen, leaving a trail of color. Each tool has a different set of options at the bottom of the screen. With the pencil, you can choose from different line widths and patterns. The paint brush has such designs as drips, circles, swirls, trees, dice, connect-the-dots, and smiling stars. There's a paint can for filling areas with color or changing the color of the entire background. Paint in different patterns, including diamonds, lines, bricks, and dots. The Eraser does more than just wipe out things. Demolish everything on the screen with dynamite, or remove parts of the screen separately using shapes and designs to wipe away objects. When you erase using the Question Mark option, a hidden picture is slowly revealed on the screen. Tools for making shapes include the Line, Rectangle, and Oval. Click shapes into place, or drag them to make different shapes. Use patterns to make outlined or filled- in shapes. The Electric Mixer adds special effects to a picture. Effects blur, distort, and rearrange the pictures. Another way to add elements is to use Rubber Stamps. Look through 336 stamps, which include animals, people, vehicles, food, objects, flowers, and buildings. Select a stamp and click anywhere on the screen to place it. Add a tree, french fries, balloons, a bicycle, and much more to your pictures. You can add text to a picture with the Text tool. Use letters, numbers, and symbols. Click a character to select it, and the character will say its own name out loud. Then click it onto the picture. To move objects on-screen, use the Moving Van. Define the size of the area you want to move, click the area, and drag it to its new location. The Undo Guy reverses the last change you made. For example, if you placed a box in the wrong spot, click the Undo Guy before you do anything else and the box will disappear. Every tool makes a sound when you use it. Listen to the paint brush splat paint onto the page. When the Moving Van moves something across the screen, you can hear it drive and then come to a screeching halt. And you'll also hear the Undo Guy shout "Oops!" and "Oh no!" The menus are full of more things to do. The Switcheroo menu contains the DrawMe and ColorMe activities. ColorMe lets you select and color pictures from its coloring book. Every picture opens with sound effects. You'll hear the sounds of a carnival or a back yard. Use the Paint Can or Wacky Pencil to color pictures. DrawMe starts with a blank screen. The program actually talks to you, offering picture ideas. Funny sentences flash across the top of the screen as they are read aloud. A sentence is made up of random phrases put together. An example may be "I'm a sneakered centipede in a dry hot desert and I'm covered with feathers." When you get an idea from the sentence, start drawing. Choose Wacky TV from the Switcheroo menu to see some mini- movies. Select a movie from the list to see a ghost, a dancer, a fishbowl, and more. Use the TV controls to play, stop, and rewind the movie, or to change channels. Select the Switch to SlideShow option in the Switcheroo menu to go to the SlideShow application. Here you can use DrawMe pictures, ColorMe pictures, movies, or other pictures you made with Kid Pix to make a slide show. You can also swap stamps and hidden pictures with the Switcheroo menu. View collections of stamps and hidden pictures. Choose a new one to use in your pictures. New collections of stamps and hidden pictures can also be added with the Kid Pix Fun Pack, which is installed on top of Kid Pix. You can make changes in Kid Pix with the Goodies menu. Edit a Rubber Stamp, or create one of your own. Add characters to the alphabet, turn tool sounds on or off, or switch to the Spanish version of the program. Pick songs to listen to, or record and play back sounds. Kid Pix 2 is full of great activities for children. And the Kid Pix Fun Pack gives them even more to do. Kid Pix 2 Price: $40 Kid Pix Fun Pack Price: $20 Broderbund Software Inc. (800) 382-4637 Paints And Crayons Finger paints and coloring books are fun, and so are computers. And since children love to create, think how much they will enjoy their very own draw and paint programs.  by Jennifer Larson
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