December 5th, 2009
Hands On, Kid Tested: Mattel Ucreate Games and Artimation
Mattel’s Ucreate Games and Artimation ($59.99 list) promises to “put mash-up creativity and game creation into the hands of kids.” I was intrigued; it sounded like a lot more than a passive game-playing experience. Ucreate Games is geared toward kids ages 7 to 13; I figured my smart 6-year-old son would be into it–and he was for a while. After I installed the software for him and attached the USB camera, I worked with him to figure out how to use the Ucreate software.
In the Ucreate Games and Artimation package, you get a drawing tablet, software, a folding digital camera attached to a stand, markers, and a set of templates. The main activities are building and playing your own pinball games and puzzles; creating animations that Mattel calls “mash-ups”; and playing a game called Ball Drop, where you try to get a ball to move from one area of a room to the exit by placing objects in strategic places.
What’s really cool about all of these activities is that you can create your own artwork to incorporate into the games. For example, you can draw different parts of the pinball table on the included templates, capture the drawing, and then import the pieces to be placed on your playing field.
Kids probably won’t play the pinball game very much after they’ve created it, though. The playing field is small, and there’s only so much you can add to it. My son has a pinball game for the Xbox that he really enjoys, and he didn’t think the Ucreate pinball game was very much fun.
However, he has had a blast making mash-ups. On the second day of using the Ucreate, he spent most of his time drawing different characters in the templates and importing them. He also took photos of his Matchbox cars and imported them. He then grabbed these newly created objects and made them move: Using the character templates, he was able to make his people dance and walk around the screen.
The amount of control you have in the animation, however, is very limited. You can add an object and make it do something like move across the screen, but there doesn’t appear to be any way to change the motion or action at any point. It’s simpler than a typical animation package, which includes frames and points at which you can change things. This really limits the product and the creativity.
Additionally, there’s no way to edit your pictures. As I mentioned, my son took pictures of his cars–but there’s no way to use just the car in a mash-up. As he animated the car, the background moved with it. It would be great if you could use the base of the camera stand as a chroma key green screen, which would automatically remove the background from objects.
My son has played with the Ucreate a few more times since then; but the mash-ups, which he initially really enjoyed creating, have become too limiting for his imagination.