Drawing is one of every child's favorite pastimes and when these drawings involve characters they already love, it's doubly fun.
To draw well, you have to practice, it is well known. You can draw a bit of everything, try different methods and use different tools, from oil pastels to software. The main advantage of Disney Art Academy, in addition to providing motivation for children with familiar faces, is that it explores all these tools with them.
Learn the basics
Disney characters are well known to children. When they draw it, they can anticipate the details and therefore focus on each step without being in too much of a hurry to see the final result. This is what my children found the most motivating. Learning to draw Disney characters and being able to reproduce them afterwards seemed very useful to them. That was enough to motivate them to listen to the instructions and do all the exercises.
Expressions
They also learned that a character who is panicking has a different mouth and eyes than a character who is crying with joy. Obviously, they already suspected it, but with Tristesse and Mike Wazawski the cyclops, they have a lotbetter understood. The instructions help add small, subtle but important details and show them how even a tiny white dot in an iris has an impact on the overall picture.
Learning about materials and layers
The Lessons pane asks children to pull out specific tools to work with an existing sketch.
Crayons, erasers and pastels are here in all sizes so that children understand that small details do not necessarily have to be done with the same sharpness as a background filler. The air of nothing, this learning of the different tools will help them to work on paper when they find themselves in front of a suitcase of water paints, pencils and oil pastels.
The game also shows them how to work with layering. They draw the rough shape on one layer, the eyes on another, details on a third layer, etc. Casually, it's a bit like giving them training on an image editing tool like Photoshop and if it's not useful immediately, they will find this training very practical in the near future.
Comparisons that make you happy
Finally, children like to compare their drawings with others (especially when they find theirs the most beautiful!). They can do this by logging in, but also thanks to the faulty drawings that the game presents from time to time.
Kids can also create a gallery oftheir works in another section to show you all they have accomplished.
Free drawing
Once they have learned to handle the tools, they will still be able to draw freely following sketches, but on a blank sheet. It's excellent for understanding the evolution of the drawing and since they can start over and over again, they will soon become specialists in drawing Mickey or Disgust.
Disney Art Academy, 3DS, 29, 99$
