Saturday, September 22, 2012

Putting the mouse on the mat


The Disney organisation has always been expert at conning kids into believing all sorts of crazy stuff is possible.  Anyone who has been to a Disneyland knows that most sub-five year olds are pretty convinced that the giant Mickey Mouse is just that - mouse meat all the way through – and that’s why most of them cringe in fear at the first encounter. It’s only when they figure out that there is a human being inside the cossie acting as The Mouse that they go in for the leg hug.
It’s the same with Disney’s Magic Artist program (you can buy a copy here). If you were young you might be forgiven for thinking that from the packaging it was going to be more Jackson Pollock than Andrew Wyeth. After all, there’s the mouse letting loose on the canvas without a drop cloth in sight. Get into the program and it’s a different story. Magic Artist is just another drawing program that doesn’t even try to teach you to draw, just to make bad copies of black outlined cartoons. Sigh.