Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker

by Disney

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006IRI6
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,049 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #50 in Software > Children's Software > Art & Creativity
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From Children's Software Revue® -- "Subscribe Now!"

Imagine being turned loose in an animator's studio, with free access to all the tools and tricks of the trade. Perfect for kids who like to tinker and experiment, the software offers unlimited options for fun, but is quite tricky to use. Even with the narrated help provided, it will take time for children (and adults) to learn the program's many functions and how to use each tool. That said, this is a terrific program with which kids create their own animated cartoon movies starring the Disney characters. They select and position backgrounds, characters, props, sound effects, and music, and combine scenes into movies, complete with title screens, credits and special effects. Children can draw and use their own artwork in their cartoons and can import their own photos as well. In addition to the cartoons, kids can make flipbooks and other printable projects. There's even an area where they can take animation lessons from real Disney animators. A second CD, the previously released Disney's Magic Artist Deluxe, is also included. Note that we think the ease of use issues make the program best for children ages eight and up.
Teaches:
Age Range: Copyright © 2001 Children's Software Revue

Amazon.com Product Description

Using Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker, kids can create their own animated cartoon shorts. Design and customize colorful animated sequences, then add music, effects, props, titles, and credits. Design a range of animated shorts, then queue them up, and add a guest star and a bonus Disney short to create a complete show for family and friends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely frustrating. I expect better from Disney., November 26, 2004

By 

Barry Gruber (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker (CD-ROM)

I've just spent the last two hours playing this game with my children. What garbage. I guess for $7.99, you get what you pay for. Here are some of my complaints:
1) The game is crashing the computer every 10 minutes or so. The computer locks up so badly, even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work: I have to turn the power off and then back on again to reboot. I'm not having this problem with any other program. (Note that I'm running on Windows 98 SE with 196 MB of Ram, so I'm running at way more the minimum requirements.)
2) The program is very hard to figure out. It's completely non-standard for a Windows program. There are no menus, and no labels on any of the animated buttons. There is a help system, but it is not available while the program is running. I can launch the help system before the program and press Alt-Tab during the program to open up help, but this sometimes freezes help.
3) The help system is compiled HTML, but there is no way to print out the whole thing. It let's you print individual pages, but I didn't try that.
4) The animation capabilities are very limited. There are lots of characters that do a simple thing standing in place, and my kids liked this at first, but quickly got bored. (So Mickey can jump up and down, and even be instructed to laugh. Big deal.) But the primary animation feature of controlling one character and making him (or her) move through the background doing different things was very hard to figure out and very limited. (I'm a professional software developer and I've worked with many graphic packages, but none were ever as confusing as this.)
5. Based on the box, my kids were expecting to make movies. This was not so, and they were disappointed. If you think of this as Disney Magic Artist Deluxe (which comes with it) plus some small animated extras, then for $7.99 it doesn't seem so bad.
6. Disney makes great films. I wish there was some thought put into making the program stable and easy to use.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great way to bring out imagination, July 31, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker (CD-ROM)

this game is really fun and it lets you imagine the way you want to. i recommand it. its not short its as long as you make it to be you can even put food commercials and have a special guest. you have very little to choose from the commercials and special guest but who cares i dont mind you shouldnt neither!!!! buy it you can make like 100 cartoons and it would save em all. warning:addiction may occure. :-)

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Basic & fun, January 16, 2007

By 

John Falone "Only the Truth...always." (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disney's Magic Artist Cartoon Maker (CD-ROM)

Another product for my artistic daughter and son. They both love it!

It is very basic, with pre-made drawings and characters, but still some flexibility in free-style cartoon making and drawing.

If you have a young budding cartoonist who likes Disney, and is learning the computer, you can't go wrong with this software!