1st Artist is a painting package aimed at users from Nursery through to Key Stage 3.
The version supplied for review was Version 1 .0 with a copyright date of 1998. 1st
Artist requires Windows 95, a 486DX2 66Mhz computer or better, an SVGA monitor, 8Mb
free space on your hard drive, 8Mb RAM and a SoundBlaster-compatible sound card and
speakers. Acorn users may well recognise 1st Artist as an enhanced version of
Resource's longstanding package. 1st Paint. 1st Artist costs £39.00 for a single
copy, a further £39.00 to extend the number of users to five and a further £60 to extend
the number to ten.
Installation from the supplied floppy discs is straightforward. On startup a screen
presents a list of 'groups' from which one is asked to choose one. These groups may be
classes, curriculum subjects, topics or whatever; setting up new groups is easy. The
purpose of these is to allow easy access to the relevant files stored on disc.
The working screen layout presents the user with a large painting area, a 'palette' of
colours on the right of the screen and a row of tools at the bottom (though the position
of these can be configured left! right, top/bottom).
The row of tools at the bottom includes a left and a right arrow that allow the user to
choose between four sets of tools: painting tools, geometry tools, advanced tools and
utilities.
The painting tools include a round and a square brush, a 'rubber band' line-drawing
tool, a spray tool and a fill tool. These all work much as one might expect. In addition
to these there are a few general tools which appear with each tool set. These allow one to
alter the size of the brushes, constrain brush movements when, for instance, one wants to
paint horizontal or vertical lines, and an undo tool.
The geometry tools include filled and empty rectangle and ellipse tools and tools for
drawing joined and radial lines.
The advanced tools include an airbrush (for which one's computer and monitor must
be able to show more than 256 colours), a smudge tool, a 'snapshot' tool, a 'stamp' tool
and tools for arranging repeat and tiling patterns. 1st Artist comes supplied with
a range of 'stamps' and further, themed sets are available from Resource on topics such as
Christmas, holidays and minibeasts. Other sets of stamps are said to be in preparation.
The tiling tools allow for quite sophisticated pattern generation, including the
reflection and rotation of a selected area.
Utilities make saving and loading pictures easy. There are buttons for printing
and 'throwing away' one's picture. A zoom control allows the close-up editing of small
areas. A 'pipette colour-picker is provided for choosing a colour from the picture being
worked on rather than the palette.
The palette first opens with a range of sixteen colours. These may be changed to a set
of sixteen different textures which, like the colours, may be used with either a brush,
line or spray tool or with the fill option. The sixteen colours are not fixed: any
one of them may be re-mixed to create a new colour. This feature works particularly well -
the user drags red, green and blue paint pots to alter the amount of these in the mix.
Different colour palettes created in this way can be saved to use again later. The
standard Windows colour selector may be used if you wish. Text entry is available, with
the ability to change font, size and colour.
One option which may delight or infuriate teachers in equal measure but is likely to
appeal to younger users is that one may have sounds for most of 1st Artist's actions.
Thus, when painting, the computer makes a different sound for each different colour or
pattern.
A reflection setting makes it possible to create one or two lines of symmetry on the
painting, so that what one does in one quarter of the screen is reflected and created
instantaneously in the other three-quarters.
1st Artist accepts files in BMP, WMF and JPEG formats. This means that a wide
variety of ClipArt resources may be used with it, in addition to scanned images, images
from digital cameras, images gathered from the Internet. Etc.
1st Artist may be configured by the teacher for different learners. Thus,
advanced options and tools may he made unavailable, creating a simpler working environment
for beginner users. Other tools may be made available as users gain competence.
1st Artist is a good introductory painting package, presenting a clear interface
for young users while also having sufficient power to stretch older pupils. Given its easy
teacher-configurability, it is well worth considering alongside other packages as a tool
for use across the primary age range.
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