Apps We Love: “Make A Scene” and “Create & Play”

Two children’s art-making apps enable users to create art through collage. Even though no drawing is required, these apps help kids create unique works of interactive art that they can save and share.

Make A Scene: Farmyard by Innivo is a new app that was inspired by the classic children’s game Fuzzy Felt, where kids would create a picture on a supplied background from a collection of felt animals, people, and vehicles. Make A Scene adds interactivity, sound effects, and convincing perspective to your picture. For example, when you choose the duck from the long list of animals, people, vehicles, birds, insects, flowers, plants, and general farm implements, the duck will quack. If you move it higher (meaning farther back) in the environment, the duck will get smaller. Don’t like the way the duck is facing? Just double-tap and it’ll face the other way.

Users have a choice of farm-related backgrounds and as I mentioned, a very long list of farm animals (and much more!) to fill out their picture. What I really love about this app is that children can use it to create farm stories from the pictures. Children really are making a “scene” here. The illustrations are simple and clean and the choices can inspire many different stories of life on the farm. And especially wonderful scenes can easily be saved and shared with friends.

Arthur and Charles Presents Create & Play by Moopf invites users to build funny faces by easily swapping out eyes, nose, etc., and accessories like hats and eye patches. Create & Play offers a very large assortment of template faces that users can manipulate or users can begin from a blank slate. Also, users can change the color of virtually anything they see from a large palette of colors.

There are so many choices, it would be virtually impossible to get to the bottom of this app. The developers claim users can create over 400 billion different faces. That should keep your kids quiet on the ride to grandma’s. And it’s easy to save and share favorite faces, so the whole family can enjoy your child’s creations.

Once saved, Create & Play allows you to incorporate your unique faces into a number of games where you match face cards or identify patterns in a row of faces. There’s a timer in the games so you can create a contest or compete against yourself for a personal best time.

And did I mention that Make A Scene: Farmyard is free and Create & Play is only 89 cents? Like I always say: free is a good price. But even for free, an app has got to be worth your child’s time and energy; these are. They will encourage and support the artist in your child as they enable them to create memorable, shareable works of art that you and your family will treasure.

Review Summary
App Name: Make a Scene: Farmyard by Innivo
Category: Education
Released: June 17, 2012
Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Price: Free.
Bottom Line: Great art-making that create a visual story.

App Name: Arthur and Charles Presents Create & Play by Moopf
Category: Games
Updated: March 18, 2012
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
Price: $0.89
Bottom Line: This app is all about the face.