Review of Kid Pix Deluxe 3D 2.1

by Amir Qadir
Mar 28, 2011
Kid Pix Deluxe 3D, allowing kids to bring their dreams to life - rated 5 out of 5
Kid Pix is a program with a long history, the first release was somewhere around 1990 when Craig Hickman developed it in order to allow his son to draw using a program that’s easier than MacPaint was at that time. This is how he discovered a niche and based on its popularity he managed to sell the product and all the associated intellectual properties to Riverdeep, a very large publishing company.

Kid Pix Deluxe is a drawing program designed to be used by children to allow them expressing their creativity. This doesn’t mean that only kids 4 – 12 years old will enjoy playing with, if you’re really new at drawing this tool might help even older ones (as long as you’re not bothered by the childish user interface). Kid Pix Deluxe was recently released (in 2010) as a 3D version, meaning the animations now created can contain 3D characters and scenes (as long as you are viewing the result on a 3D enabled screen).

This is what your children can do with Kid Pix and stimulate their drawing capabilities:

  • Basic drawing. Kid Pix has several very common drawing tools, such as Line (draws simple lines), Paint Bucket (fill area with color), Square (draws squares or rectangles) and Circle (draws circles or ellipses).
  • Advanced drawing. Aside the common drawing tools, Kid Pix contains a Wacky Brush (add various effects to the drawing), Mixer (distort, blur or add fade effects) and Rubber Stamps (similar to clip arts).
  • Managing drawing elements. Features that let your kids manage the drawing include Erase (using it parts of the drawing can be removed), Moving Truck (parts of the drawing can be selected and moved around) and Dye Tool (using it colors can be copied from one section to another).
  • Add text. Text can be inserted in the drawing too, either using the Text tool (cool feature, since the letters are presented as stamps and each letter is spoken when selecting it) or Typing tool (anything can be typed in).
  • Sound insertion. Sounds can be recorded and added to the drawing, and if your kids will do mistakes there’s always the Undo Guy that lets them undo some of the changes.
  • Slideshows. After they’ve created the drawings, these can be assembled in a Slideshow, including the ability to add transition effects and recorded sounds – fun part is that drawings can be used to create the impression of motion of the characters.
  • Background/Cliparts/Sounds. Some of the features above were removed starting with Kid Pix Deluxe, as the newest version now focuses on allowing your kids to put together pre-made drawings and animations, rather than creating their own from scratch. This is the case for Backgrounds (allows them to select a pre-made image as a background from the provided library) and Clip Arts (images distributed with their libraries that can be either static or already animated).
  • 3D everything. Kid Pix Deluxe 3D not only ships with a library of images/sounds/animations, but also includes 3D glasses. This way your kids will be able to see the 3D characters and animations they create. Because this program now focuses on creating digital stories and animations in 3D.

Kid Pix 3D evolved from a basic drawing program to an animation studio for kids, and will allow children to really put into a scene what goes through their heads. Ever wanted to create a mystic world such as the one from Alice in Wonderland? This can help you re-create not the exact world, but similar in strangeness. This shift from a drawing tool to a 3D animation program might have happened also because there are open source drawing tools (such as Tux Paint) that kids can use nowadays. All-in-all, Kid Pix is a fun tool for your kids, and maybe will help trigger an early design skill.

Publisher’s Description of Kid Pix Deluxe 3D 2.1

Kid Pix Deluxe 3D is an application aimed at the children to stimulate their drawing capabilities and imagination. In includes a set of basic tools that include a Line Tool, Paint Bucket, Square tool etc and also some special tools such as:
- Wacky brush, mixer tool and Rubber stamps
- Moving truck and dye tools
- A text and typing tool
- Sound tool and more
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