TAB Kids 3.1, The
© 2008 Digital Video S.p.A.
Powerful but pricey, this creativity package makes it easy to create your own 2D cartoons. Designed to give older children the very same tools that the professionals use to create animations, this Italian-designed creativity package is an adaptation of "Toonz Technology". You start by drawing characters or other elements, and then use drawing or modeling tools to color or texture your screens. You can create up to four tracks, or moving elements, at the same time. You can animate drawings by modeling them, or moving and transforming a selected portion and composing animation by repeating and adding drawings, adding images, and importing a soundtrack. Work can be exported as Flash, QuickTime or 3GP (for playing on mobile phones). We found the program to be fairly easy to pick up and use, although we missed a set of standardized pull-down menus, for help with importing graphics. Make sure you watch the tutorials because there are some hidden features that are hard to find on your own. The bottom line? This powerful program looks more childish than it really is. If you teach animation, you should, at the very least, download the free trial from www.tabkids.com and have a look.
$80, Windows, Mac OSX
Teaches: art, creativity
CTR Rating: 88%