Customer Reviews

Fisher-Price Digital Arts & Crafts Studio

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

My daughter loves to create art, including computer art, so we got her this for her 5th birthday. We are really impressed by how much is in this system! I especially like the themes within features such as the backgrounds and stampers, and you can upload your own images as well.

Complaints: It does have some bugs. We have gotten into modes where it seems to respond to the prior command rather than the current one. For example, you click on one stamper and it applies the prior one, or you pick blue and it applies brown. That is quite frustrating but it only happens rarely. Also, the tablet takes a bit of getting used to. I've seen older kids really struggle with it. My daughter picked up on it right away but she has quite a bit of patience.

My daughter has explored many of the features and we have many more to go. I know this will be an enjoyable system for her for a long time. It will adjust with her abilities.

I was really excited when I saw this product. The first two I bought didn't have disks in them, so it was back to the store twice, but on the third try, I was able to install successfully. I didn't really have much trouble with the install (a microsoft blip where it froze while preparing to install, but that's all).

When I tried it, I have to say, I was disappointed. I have a 5 year old and a 3 year old. I thought they'd have a great time with this, but I'm not even sure which functions would be suitable for them. Now, in fairness, they are computer games kids, not crafts kids, so maybe I'm biased.

First, yes, the colouring is great and I can see that being a hit. The dot to dot? No. It's too hard to control the stylus, even for me, let alone a child still working on drawing straight lines in 'real life'. And I can buy them dot to dot books, if that's what they want, for much cheaper than this.

As for the other projects, I really like the calendar function, but it would be of limited use to my kids. The card function is nice, but, again, its of limited use for my little ones. Essentially, most of the projects will need supervision for young kids. I can see this being great for an older child that likes crafts, though.

A couple of complaints:

1. to exit a project, you are asked if you want to print and finish or not exit. There's no option to not print. In my case, I keep the printer off and delete the queue. Then you're asked if you want to save after asking if you want to print. It should be the other way around and you should not have to print every time you leave a project. You should be able to just save it and come back later.

2. I know this is a tough one, but hand-eye coordination is tough enough for adults, let alone kids. Some type of display on the pad would be nice, even if it doesn't have all the best quality display. That way, a child can see exactly where the stylus needs to be placed, rather than trying to guess by moving it over a spot and looking up the the computer screen. For the current price point, I don't know how Fisher Price could accomodate this, but this is hard for my guys.

3. I don't like that I have to turn off the unit to get back to the computer. Sure, it's a great feature to keep your kids off your computer, but in truth, they soon learn that if they hit that very big on/off button, they can get into Mom's computer anyway. It's an inconvenience for me, because if you want to import your own pictures, you actually have to move them into the software's directory before they're available. This means that you have to know which pictures you want, move them, then turn on the system. If you've forgotten one or change your mind, you exit the system and go back to windows to move the picture you need. Then you turn on the system and start at the beginning again (including sitting through the logo placement at the beginning). I would want to be able to toggle between the Art board and my keyboard to do whatever needs doing. If I have to send an email (or turn off a printer error notification), I shouldn't have to interrupt my son's playing completely for a quickly couple of mouse strokes in my work.

4. The colour rainbow was not that flexible. I appreciate that it's hard to provide buttons for all the colours, but once in the rainbow, it seems too easy to pick the wrong colour. You pick one, and if your stylus slides over another before the system has recognised your pick, you end up with the wrong colour.

5. Importing your own pictures. To find out how to do this, you have to go to the parental controls, which were not that easy to find. In fact, I think I had to press the print button, then use a menu or something like that. It's not intuitive or in the instructions. Once you find out that the pictures have to be in the "Add Pictures" directory (and you exit the system to move your pictures and re-enter the system again), you find that choosing them is slow, if you've got large picture files. In essence, importing the pictures is a slow process, not minutes, but several seconds at least. It would be nice if this was faster.

6. Once you get your pictures up, you can either use them as a background or a stamp. For a stamp, there are three sizes. It seemed the small was too small (perfect for a stamp size, though), and the medium was too big. If I just wanted the picture large enough to see, but not covering everthing, it was not easy to do. Also, once you place the stamp, you could either "do over" (using the undo button) or leave it where it was. There is no drag and drop type of function to place it where you want it. If there was ghosting to show where it would be placed before you press the stylus, I would understand that, but essentially, they're assuming kids won't mind it not being where they want it. In addition, you can't edit or crop your pictures with this tool at all, but you can distort them, which is fun for kids.

7. The undo button is limited to undoing only the last thing done. You can erase your entire picture, but not undo more than one thing, which takes some planning.

8. Once a background is placed, you can only change it, not get rid of it, unless you erase the entire picture (or it's the last thing you did and you use the undo button). That's annoying.

9. Some of the projects don't seem to have an exit button. All you can do is press the home button on the tablet and you are given the print and exit choice.

Good things:

1. As I said, for little ones, the colouring is really fun. (although, it's not that easy for them to colour in their own drawings, because you have to remember to close all your lines)

2. Any user will improve their hand-eye coordination, which is good for budding artists.

3. The card projects can be simple and fun for kids, if you're willing to let your child use your printer or willing to help them with it. If you're an adult, I would suggest Print Shop for your own card projects, though.

4. Any projects you save will make a .png file in the directory, which you can access and use in other software or emails. This might be fun for a child to see, say, a slide show (using other software) of their work, import their drawing to your blog or send it to grandma via email.

5. The buttons are easy for a child to use and their purposes are reasonably clear, based on the pictures. However, for some things, it's better if the child can read what's needed on the screen, ie: the print and save or other directions. The good thing is, though, the instructions are also spoken, so make sure you have the sound on for your kids.

All in all, I'm not sure I'll keep this product. I think Fisher Price will come up with better versions. My kids are young enough that I can wait for the future products.

As I said earlier, if your child loves crafts, this might be really fun. If your child just loves computer colouring, that function is available. If you want your child to be able to play with their own pictures and draw on them, this might get used. If you want to teach more about hand-eye coordination, the stylus will help with that. It might even teach a child who's slow to pick up a pencil properly how to do just that.

But if you have active kids who want to play games or sports or trucks or pretend, not sit and colour, this probably isn't the right product for you. Get them a colouring book and markers for the times they might feel like colouring. Also, there are a lot or really good computer games and systems out there that are educational and would be money better spent, such as the Leapster or the Vtech smile systems.

My daughter got this from her grandmother as a 4th birthday present...

I had my reservations about it, due to bad reviews. I was absolutely wrong...this toy is GREAT.

The problem, the way I see it, is that people failed to read the system requirements.

Just because it is considered a "toy", don't automatically assume that your outdated computer will be able to run it.

The application NEEDS a video card with 64MB of ram, and DirectX 9.0c.
Any pc that is able to play any games released in the past few years has WELL OVER these specs. (my current pc has 256MB video ram for example)

(If your pc is 10 years old, this may be a problem...just read the system requirements, just as you would with any other computer software or hardware...right from the box in front of me:
--
windows vista/2000/xp
750mhz processor
256mb memory
64mb video ram
1024x768 video resolution
--

There were no software hangups, etc. The tablet works EXACTLY as advertised, we love it. My 4 year old loves it, my 7 year old had a go with it and had fun, and even my wife and I have been playing with it.

GREAT present for any kid that loves to draw and play...give it a try!

Kids as young as 2 and as old as 10 have used this system in our house. I find myself using it as well. It is so easy to use and really encourages artful expression that is missing in school these days. Printing is very easy and hooking it up once downloading the software is as easy as plugging into the usb cord. Kids 5 and over can work without any help at all. I would recommend getting a cheap printer with cheap ink catridges and set a limit on print outs. Otherwise you will have 20+ printouts after each session!! I like that I can add software to it for more pictures and ideas down the line - this will prolong its life and interest with my kids. Walmart has an animal bonus disc included (retail [...]) and $[...] shipping! I am saving the animal disc for the holidays.\

UPDATE: This is still getting plenty of use in our house and we have downloaded it on our 2nd computer without problems as well. We make thank you cards, teacher notes, decorate photographs and so forth. Lots of longevity in this toy which is rarely seen in my house.

Most of these 1 star reviews are for people who don't check out the box requirements prior to purchasing and they give a false review since they have never even tried the product to review it. How some people can plug it in and play immediately whereas others can't install just shows it is their computer, NOT the toy. Make sure you check your requirements and enjoy!! It is well worth the money.

My kids (ages 2, 4, and 6) absolutely love this product. They are each able to use it succesfully and have so much fun being able to paint and draw on the computer. Dd is working on making placecards for our Thanksgiving table. There are so many fun things to do! Love it! Plus, it's not messy!!

Ok, I was desperate. I write children's books, and I can't draw worth beans. My daughter, an art major, had received a drawing tablet for her previous birthday, and had let me play with it to do some of my illustrating--that is, the stuff she didn't have time to do. She leaves for college, and I don't have $350 for a tablet. After searching the Internet high and low for something I could afford, I happened to find this item in of all places (where else do you find anything anymore), Wal-Mart. So, as I usually do, I came and looked it up on Amazon.com and got a fantastic price for it.

I waited anxiously, and sure enough, I was like a kid at Christmas. It took me about 30 seconds to make my first picture--I didn't draw it, I was just playing with the buttons to see what they did. Of course, there are several things built in that I just won't use (I guess, unless I'm terribly bored) such as a connect-the-dots option, arts & crafts projects, etc.

As for the tablet, it's a very basic but workable toy. The hardest problem I have is that the stylus pen is very thick, both to hold and to draw; it's not for detailed work. However, once you get used to "playing" with it, it's adequate, at least for what I needed.

There is even a way to retrieve your artwork (if you don't manage to erase it first) and alter it in another "real" art program; of course, my best work I deleted, but at least I printed a copy of it first.

If you're a serious artist, buy it for your kid--this isn't what you are looking for. If you are illustrating (very basic) kid's books, it's very good; although I must admit, I still do a lot of my illustrating with a mouse in the "draw" mode.

On our old computer we had a GeForce 6800 256 MB graphics card. We now NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB video card. Both times we had the same issue. Our computer is used for gaming by my husband and we have MORE than the requirements. For some reason on install, it kept telling us that we didn't have a large enough video card and we needed at least 64M. I don't know what kind of math Fisher Price is using, but 768 is bigger than 64. From the CD itself, my husband had to go to Tools, Folder Options, View, uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types", make sure "show Hidden Files and Folders" is marked, copy the disc to a new folder on the desktop then from that folder on the desktop, do the same thing to view all the files. Then click on the options.ini file and change the 0 to a 1. From there, you install the program from the folder on the desktop, not on the CD. It will still show an error, but will allow you to at least install it. My daughter is only 19 months old, but it having a ball with this. She loves drawing on paper and loves using the computer to play on Nick Jr or Noggin, so we thought this would be the perfect marriage. It took her minutes to figure out how to get the colors she wants, get backgrounds, and get her favorite animals as stamps. This toy is of course WAY too much for her right now and I will enjoy seeing how her use of it changes as she gets older. Right now its a really cool way to scribble on the computer without screwing up Mommy and Daddy's files. I can't wait until she wants to make an actual art project! I'm going to make her 2nd birthday invitations and party hats with this thing.

Update 09/30/08: We've own this thing for 9 months now and still love it. Our daughter is now nearly 2 1/2 and has for the most part, has the working of it down. She spends about 20 minutes a night on it before bed- enough time for me to clean up dinner. She can choose stamps, backgrounds, different erase tools, and more from the wheel. She just figured out how to print the other day, so we'll have to set the parental options to limited printing. At first she only used the blank page to scribble, but now she uses the color book feature also. Now that she knows her letters, she is attempting the dot-to-dots, but her coordination isn't there yet. I can't wait until she gets into the crafts projects. The Digital Arts and Crafts Studio has grown with her just as we expected and she still has so much more to figure out and grow with. We have put the new Fisher Price Fun-2-Learn Computer Cool School (horrible name!) on her wish list for this year.

If you buy this product, especially if you are running windows 7, make sure that you visit the website and download the updated drivers and software, the original software will not work on a windows 7 machine, you must download the updates. Hope this helps.

My son received this for his 5th birthday. We were both very excited to use it. The software took forever to load. Once we got it installed we found that it wasn't as easy to use as we thought. First of all, the pen is difficult to manipulate. My son tried to do one of the dot-to-dots and got vey frustrated because the pen wouldn't draw a straight line. The results of writing with the pens looks just like what your signature looks like when you sign your name on the gizmo at the stores.

It does have a lot of coloring pages and related stamps. And it's suppose to allow you to import your own photos, but we haven't tried that feature yet.

Both my daughter and sone have tried to use this and were okay at first but tired of being frustarted and now it's sitting in the closet....forgotten.

Gayle

Sadly, it doesn't work for me. My vista laptop doesn't recognize it (it is Vista after all) And my mac running parallels only worked for a couple days. Also, the support site is down. Wow.

I'll give it more stars when it works.

The durability is great; it still looks fine after being thrown off the balcony.