If there's one thing we know how to do expertly, it's making the best, most realistic, digital art tools on the internet. Our experience as Plug-in Media has delivered many different iterations of different drawing and paining games and apps for all the major children's broadcasters including BBC, Nickelodeon, Turner Broadcasting and Sky. This example for Sesame Workshop is one of our favourites and was launched alongside Elmo’s Art Maker (on the Sesame Street website) back in 2018. The app version expands on the HTML5 art tools and boasts 24 canvases and over 100 different ways to paint and draw. You can paint a monsterpiece using oil paints, use a magic wand to scatter stars across the sky, fire goo out of a cannon or release a whoopee cushion full of paint onto the canvas – all in the name of art!
Entering the app for the first time, the artist is greeted by Elmo and Cookie Monster in the gallery before being prompted to choose a picture frame as the canvas for their artwork. Each frame contains a different selection of tools to use, and each of these is themed around a different muppet, holiday or setting. It’s then a simple matter of tapping, swiping, dragging and getting creative in just about every way the touchscreen will allow to create a marvellous work of art! After the final touches have been applied to the artwork, the artist returns to the gallery to receive the carefully honed criticisms of the Cookie Monster, who has great taste in both art and cookies!
The completed artwork is hung in the gallery for the artist to enjoy, or to return to later. There is such a huge variety of tools in this game that there are literally hours of fun to be had. We know from experience that there is nothing more daunting to a child than a plain blank canvas, so the app contains weekly challenges set by Elmo himself, to spark their imagination and creativity.
As if that weren’t enough, there are also an additional six ‘monsterpeice’ canvases to unlock, containing Sesame takes on classic works of art by Van Gogh, Pollock, Warhol and more.