Create on Disney.com http://disney.go.com/create

Windows, Mac OSX, Internet Site

Teaches: creativity

CTR Rating: 94%

CTR Review

8/1/2010. A new "wall" feature lets you contribute your picture to a giant picture, with thousands of others. Your picture is placed in the scene based on the colors it best represents, as determined by the wall software. Create on Disney.com (http://disney.go.com/create) is a suite of four open-ended activities that pushes the envelope for web-delivered creativity tools. Because it uses raster graphics (vs. bitmapped graphics), you can zoom way in with no reduction in resolution. You can also resize or rotate objects for just about any effect. At the core of Create is Digital Painter, with features that Photoshop users used to dream about: unlimited undo or redo, layers that can be moved after they're placed, and no limits to the number of objects that can be stamped on the screen. Basic drawing tools let you highlight, sketch or blob on watercolors, with an innovative color palette that can be programmed with your favorite colors.Besides the Digital Painter, three other activities include: Animods, for creating animated creatures; Comic Creator, with white blank panels waiting to be filled in with graphics and text, and Disney clip art; and Photo Mashups, an open-ended celebration of Disney celebrity, where you can drag-and-drop the Jonas Bros. and compose a room poster. Projects can be tagged and stored on the Disney site, after it's been approved by a panel of screeners based in Disney's Kerpoof Studios, in Boulder, CO. So what's the catch? Besides the ads -- images of Toaster Strudel will flash as you draw -- you learn that you can't save your work unless you become a Disney Guest. This means giving up a bit of your identity, specifically, your birthday and email. You also can't upload your own images, or export your work as a graphics file; an important feature that currently has a "coming soon" sign on it. You can print at any time however. Once you join, your work is saved in your portfolio -- your own little corner of the virtual magical kingdom.