Art Academy: Learn Painting and Drawing Techniques with Step-by-Step Training (Nintendo DS) Review

Many believed that the ‘Training’ craze had started to subside, with the likes of Maths Training, Sight Training and the two Brain Training games no longer being present in the charts, the slew of Third Party copycats has dried up, and the first Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training on DS actually being recently surpassed as the biggest ever selling UK release in terms of single unit sales by Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. However, Nintendo is set to prove to the world that the market is not merely hungry for war-driven first person shooters, but is still eager for new blood in the educational genre, with the impending launch of Face Training and this drawing tool, Art Academy here in Europe.

Headstrong Games, formerly Kuju, is renowned for working with Nintendo on the Battalion Wars series, as well as with SEGA on House of the Dead: Overkill. Now it has helped Nintendo transfer the two DSiWare Art Academy games over to a full retail package, and done so in fantastic style. The visual approach of the game itself throughout is wonderfully artistic, with an almost water-colour painting feel to the graphics, and a wide variety of beautiful colours always filling the screen, normally accompanied by different cutely animated characters, such as Vince (Vincent van Gogh, except with two ears...), as well as a melodic soundtrack that is ideal for proceedings.

The basic idea of Art Academy is to show how anyone can discover their hidden, creative talent and enhance the artistic skills deep inside themselves in order to produce superb drawings and paintings in the future. Nintendo and Headstrong have attempted to break everything down into baby steps that make the product as accessible to the masses as possible, transforming the stylus into a variety of different pencils and paintbrushes that behave in an extremely realistic manner as you work on your canvas (the touch-screen!), working through various lessons and utilising a plentiful supply of art materials. For those that have the luxury of playing Art Academy the DSi or large Nintendo DSi XL system, there is a special feature whereby photographs taken with the portable’s camera can be viewed on the top screen and copied by hand in the ‘Free Paint’ mode so that you can easily recreate anything from your surroundings, and the beauty of it is that all creations can be saved directly to the cartridge and viewed using the slideshow feature included.

Before diving into the main section of the game, it is advisable to test the waters slightly by working through the demo tutorial that is on offer, where Vince the artist takes you through various steps in order to draw an apple - a very fresh one, he tells you, that was picked out of the garden that morning. After removing the leaves to make the image clearer and telling the player to sit down and relax, just as his dog, Bacon, has already done, it is time to begin the introductory sequence that will reveal that anyone can become an artist, with a little guidance, of course. In the demonstration version there are seven stages, starting with ‘Draw Outline’ with the point of a HB pencil, before bringing up a grid. The player is then given the opportunity to follow exactly what Vince did, whilst also able to investigate the other options available, such as selecting other pencil thicknesses (2H for very fine drawings or 2B for the thickest option, a rubber/eraser and the option of changing how to hold the actual pencil, using its tip or placing it on its side to do flat shading). Should you forget exactly what the objective is, a quick tap on the ‘?’ icon brings up a ‘Save,’ ‘Continue,’ (and so on) screen, but also shows the task outline on the top screen. This comes in very handy for when the action has been paused for a while and coming back leaves you pondering exactly what you were previously in the middle of doing.

Moving on from the first step there is ‘Blocking In,’ which involves starting to colour your outline, choosing from trays of paint on offer (in the main game you can mix to your heart’s desire, using ten tubes of paint and storing mixtures in any of the twenty empty slots in order to achieve the shade you want), then whichever brush (rounded, flat, large or small) is suitable for the situation. Following this, ‘Tonal Layers’ lets you choose darker colours to change the feel of the previous base paint, taking into consideration the source of light striking the object in question, giving a true sense of three dimensions, and clever use of the rubber/eraser must be taken into consideration for some of the most useful effects, as well as using a clean, wet brush for blurring to smudge colours together. Zooming right into the canvas is also possible so that budding artists can perfect their in-progress masterpieces by amending even the finest of details, turning on an overlaid grid for more accuracy were necessary.

Art Academy: Learn Painting and Drawing Techniques with Step-by-Step Training is the perfect tool for anyone looking to start from scratch, yet also has enough advanced art courses to appeal to those who wish to push the boat out further and develop their skills even more than before. There is a wide selection of pre-loaded images in the material library to help provide some inspiration to anyone wanting to jump straight in a draw to their heart’s content, as well as plenty of advice from Vince the tutor, who also serves up a healthy dose of art theory and intriguing techniques for players to test in their own time. With lessons being inspired by famous artists like Albrecht Dürer (German), Paul Cézanne (French), Leonardo da Vinci (Italian), Jan van Huysum (Dutch), John Constable (English) and many more, Art Academy is the ideal tool for any DS owner with some creativeness inside them waiting to burst free.