I'll go ahead and admit this right now. I'm not a fan of DSiWare. I know it's the popular thing to say right now but in a lot of ways, even the games I enjoy most on it, I find myself making excuses. It's usually making excuses for it's shortcomings based either on price or the hardware. I recently bought my third point card exclusively for DSi and the sentiment is typically the same. And keep in mind I have many of the "top games." This is my history, you should know this because when I say Art Academy requires no excuses, that's exactly what I mean. It's not "good for $8" or "Well, what can you expect for DSiWare." This is good and I dare even say a reason to own a DSi by itself.


But when I said I was going to review Art Academy, I was greated with responses like "What's that" and "Art Whatsit?" Being a Nintendo published, Headstrong Games developed, application so deeply entrenched in DSi's features, everyone should know about it. For this, I blame NOA. Art Academy: First Semester is available on your DSi right now for 800 points. What it is about is something so much more. You see, Headstrong COULD have just put out a paint program and called it a day. Instead they give you legitimate art lessons, history notes, and even explain why you're doing what you're doing as you go forward.


For now, we're going to focus on the lessons. If you've taken an art class, that's like that. The first three lessons are completely throwaway images to get you familiar with the tools. When the real lessons start, you'll also gain access to mini lessons. These are really just review sessions that further delve into the theory of what you learned and leaving you to your own devices. Yes, you COULD skip them, but you'd be cheating yourself. For practice, you may even want to repeat lessons. For your benefit, the images done with the exercises will fill this review and I'll even include three images done post lessons . The lesson breakdown is as follows.


Lesson 1: Simple Apple pencil exercise
Lesson 2: Simple Sunset paint exercise
Lesson 3: Simple Tree compositing media exercise
Lesson 4: Advanced Pencil Techniques: Drawing a Pear
Mini Lesson: Drawing a Pepper
Lesson 5: Advanced Composite Techniques: Painting a Lime
Mini Lesson: Painting an Apple and two Peaches
Lesson 6: Advanced Painting Techniques: Painting a Wave
Mini Lesson: Painting a Seascape


As you can imagine, this isn't going to go over everything you could possibly know and, as predicted, many of the more advanced lessons are being held back for Second Semester (currently slated for release on September 28th). In fact, theories like the Color Wheel and Paint Mixing are held back. However, 5 minutes in Free Paint Mode can help you riddle out those controls. And the lessons, as stated before, are geared in the exact same way as if you purchased an art class textbook. Trust me, I was an Art Major. So I can tell you right now, the lessons alone are worth the purchase price. I will even go as far as to say of all the "edutainment" titles released on DS, this is definately the most well planned curiculum of any I have seen.


The Free Paint mode is another tremendous asset to this application. By itself, Free Paint is more than worth the price. But keep in mind, you just completed some lessons telling you how to use it. That's what makes it much more powerful. While the application lacks the ability to zoom in really close (one zoom setting), the zoom available is decent enough to get some of your detailing desires done. Also within the toolset are grid functions, source image filters (more on that later), and a completely customizable palette via paint mixing. Things I would have liked to have seen will be mentioned later. For an artist like myself, this tool is a great portable boon leaving the only question on why it hasn't been done sooner outside from the homebrew community.

Now you may ask, what kind of paint program is it? MS Paint, Photoshop, or Painter? Well, the simple answer is Painter. You see, MS paint has Pixel on/off functionality. Photoshop has Pixel on/off + Opacity. It's Painter that emulates natural media, which is exactly what Art Academy does in a limited fashion. You see, you CAN use the flat of a pencil to blend crosshatching in (I almost yearn for a blend stick in their toolkit). Likewise, using a brush spent on paint in an area allows you to blend colors. In other words, these are REAL skills based on the real medium and you can, in fact, transfer them to real life.


So earlier I mentioned how well integrated this app is to your DSi. Now's as good of time as any to REALLY sell you on this app. This app is directly tied to your Camera channel. All images you create can be saved out to your photo album. From there, you can upload to Facebook. When you export these images, you CAN add a frame. A couple of my examples have such a frame. So, then, is it ONLY exporting to the photo album? Here is the really cool feature and one which I've taken advantage of. On your top screen in Free Paint mode, you can import an image from your photo gallery. This means you can snap a couple pictures as source material thanks to the DSi functions and bring it directly into this app. You cannot paint over the image so skill is still involved. From there, this application has additional features. By pressing B and A, you can go through several filters. These range from simplifying and saturating the colors (a paint guide) to desaturating and increasing contrast (pencil guide) to even reducing to outlines (compositing guide). As I said before, really powerful tools.


So the only question you probably have now is "Well, everything seems perfect, what COULD be wrong?" There are, of course, limitations set to the program and almost all of them seem like nitpicks. In fact, I feel like an asshole bringing them up. The first is that it's broken up into two semesters (thus far). I feel like a douche mentioning this but it has to be said. That makes this program 1600 points total although as mentioned above, the free paint mode is completely unlocked. You can also only save one work in progress at a time. Not exactly sure why since the DS has internal memory and SD card support. This seems like a limitation built entirely on "Well, we could make it a feature next time around." It would also be nice to be able to save the paint palettes you've mixed. For example, you may want to do more than one Batman image, not having to remix all your paints would be excellent. I'd also like to be able to save multiple stages (or checkpoints) within free paint. So that if I make a mistake, it's easy to roll it back a couple spots. Color sampling should also be a feature (You CAN mark a sampled color on the color wheel helping you mix a palette but you cannot directly sample) as well as a closer zoom. It'd also like to be able to pencil over the paints to try and achieve a more illustrated look. And the final bitch really, really is nitpicking. I would like to be able to load and play an MP3 or playlist while working in Free Paint mode.

If Headstrong Games would like to correct any of these complaints with instructions on how to do them, I will gladly update this review and share the knowledge.


All in all, I thoroughly enjoy this application and continue to be baffled by the fact that not even Nintendo is promoting this. It's very easy to dismiss this as shovelware and a ripoff by the title alone but this application has me tied to my DS in a way I've never been before. This is a great application for art beginners and veterans alike. And the way it's tied to DSi functions completely validates the more expensive hardware. If you, as a Nintendo Gamer, do not support this unique initiative while buying the Express crippleports, you have no one else to blame as the next round of gameclocks come out.

9 of 10.