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As with almost all Focus products they are republished – that is after all what they do – here Art Attack (150MB of Hard Disc space) and Art Attack Make It (350MB of Hard Disc space) make up this £9.99 offering.

Art Attack

This seems to date back to a Europress product of around five years ago, but it runs fine today. Spoken help – for those not yet able to read – is provided by Neil Buchanan who it says was/is a presenter of children’s TV shows. Certainly once the package is installed most if not all actions are easily worked out from the screen. Maybe the very young would need some basic assistance in completing some of the tasks and surely it is better the young use digital glue and glitter rather than the real stuff. Certainly a lot less mess for someone to clear up afterwards.

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Kids love cartoons – well if they don’t all the TV shows seem to be wrong – and the slightly older child can create short cartoons with animated sprites, backdrops and of course the all important sound effects, also animated and static stamps add that effect quickly for no real effort.

Kids tend to want to move quickly from one activity to another, just click on the padlock on the screen they are using and they are free to move to another part of the desktop no closing down and restarting required, best of all the first scene is still available.

Art Attack Make It

A natural follow on from the package above and probably for the slightly older child as it involves projects that can be made up into real objects using (origami) paper folding techniques, the DVD box does say that PVA glue will be required to complete some tasks.

Things like planes and kites, lots of masks – ideal for Halloween, not all are scary – models of animals and birds, buildings, hats and disguises and of course decorations.

The basic interface is - not surprisingly - the same as Art Attack but using designs the imagination is brought to the fore as lets say a basic pattern can be shown on the screen this can be printed out with just the lines that need to be folded to create whatever it may be, these can be filled in with colours of the child’s choice before printing or perhaps even better for the more adventurous painted once produced using standard paints or pencils.

Some of the projects are quite advanced and would require a lot more patience than I have – as I approach my second childhood – but maybe a talented child will be stretched by Art Attack Make It, certainly if something like this had been around when I was in my first childhood I would certainly have liked it.

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