KID PIX STUDIO

Reviewed By: Carole Stewart McDonnell
VOLUNTEER GUEST REVIEWER

GAME TECH INFO

Computer Platform: PC, MAC
Produced by: Broderbund
Price Range: $19-35
Learning curve time: 1 hr.
Age level: 7+

Genre: Children/Family
Christian Rating: 5 of 5
   (nothing offensive)
Gameplay: 5 of 5
   (excellent)
Violence: 5 of 5
   (none)
Adult Content: 5 of 5
   (none)

"Kid Pix Studio" is a painting and creativity program from Broderbund Software, a company that has created many programs for both adults and children. This is my son's favorite drawing program. Programs on the CD include programs for making slide shows, animations, drawings and paintings. The drawing program enables the child to draw their own pictures or to use pictures supplied in the program.

The movie-viewing program, Wacky TV enables children to view pre-made (avi) movie files from the “Kid Pix” CD, other CD-ROMS and movies a child might download from the Internet. In fact, most of the mini-programs in this art activity program are networkable because they share standard file sharing protocols. A child can create an art bitmap in “Kid Pix Studio” which can be seen in another program. And a parent's artwork from a "grown-up program" can easily be viewed in “Kid Pix” if the parent has saved the file as a bitmap image. In addition to the drawing and animation programs, there is a puppet program in which each key represents some movement of the puppet. This program can be used for writing photo essays, school presentations, or making collages. It is also a nice way for the child who deals with the world visually to record his feelings or thoughts.

There is some danger of the computer-savvy child using the movie-viewer file to download the wrong kind of movies from the Internet or filling up one's hard drive with movie clips. Picture (.bmp) files and movie (.avi) files are large files and they can proliferate quickly. Just keep track of all those art files or have your child save the files to a floppy disk, a Re-writable CD, or a zip drive.

Year of Release—1995

Positive—I remember playing this game for the first time when I was seven years old in the second grade. I'm seventeen and I still look back on the game. It was my first experience with computer graphics, and I believe it helped me towards my web design skills, of all things. Your kid will really like this. My Ratings: [5/4]
—Garrett O'Hara, age 17

Positive—I had that game when I was like 9. Its a lot of fun to play with. There [is] another program called Kidscuts--it was even better than Kidspix. My Ratings: [5/5]
—Amanda Legault, age 13

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Christian Spotlight review are those of the reviewer (both ratings and recommendations), and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Films for Christ or the Christian Answers Network.