Let’s face it – here at Plug-in, we make great creativity games, even if we do say so ourselves. Having said that, we may have set ourselves our biggest arty challenge yet when CBeebies wanted an art tool that could be re-skinned across any of the wonderfully various shows included in the CBeebies family. The challenge: create a vanilla art tool designed for children that included all the classically crafty elements you find at play schools up and down the country as well as exciting new interactive elements for desktop play. Then we needed to find a way to make sure the feature set could be themed from Tree Fu Tom to Andy’s Wild Adventures!
We do love getting our hands dirty at Plug-in Towers and we all spent a while thinking back to our toddler crafting days and coming up with ways to bring that sense of engaging excitement to desktop. How can we make a child feel like they can create anything and everything? Should we have all the tools placed around the scene or in a menu system? Should the paints, pencils and stickers be put on a carousel? What should we include? What stickers can we use and how should they respond to the user?
After a few prototypes, we tested the two we felt gave that overwhelming sense of creativity with children in local play groups. The reaction was unanimous and you can see what we all (including our amazing kid testers!) decided on, with the Tree Fu Tom version: Stink’s Slimetastic SketchPad; Andy’s Wild Adventures: Andy’s Wild Art and the original application for CBeebies: Make a Picture.
Play with the themed and message stickers, paints, pencils, markers and paint fill effects. Don’t forget our amazing glitter tool AND you can even take a picture of yourself or upload one from your computer to add to your image! Print your finished picture out, save it to your desktop or send it to granny as a thank you card!
Have a go and get creating!