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3DS

North America

Colors! 3D

by Zachary Miller - April 7, 2012, 5:57 am EDT
Total comments: 7

9

Turn your 3DS into a Wacom tablet.

I’ve never been much for art programs on the DS or 3DS. Granted, I didn’t try very many of them. The most I got out of the DS was FlipNote Studio (which, despite its flaws, is wonderful) and PictoChat. On the 3DS, we have SwapNote, in which I drew ham-fisted pictures of dinosaur heads for all my friends. Well, just the other day I received a review copy of Colors! 3D, a new 3DS art app up now on the eShop. As you can well imagine, I was hesitant, but upon playing around with it for a while, I’m a believer. You can create truly wonderful pieces of art with Colors! 3D.

The game is basically a simplified version of Corel or even Photoshop Elements: you pick a color (from an enormous selection of gradations), pick a line thickness, pick a brush type, and an opaqueness setting and go to it. Tapping the R button brings up your artist tools whenever you want to change or experiment. There are a few other options, too: you can reset the canvas, undo actions (this is a godsend), zoom in, start from a photo, etc. Starting with a photo is more fun than you might think—I took a photo of my Wonder Woman figure and gave her an alternate color scheme. Now she looks like Donna Troy!

The real draw, though (see what I did there?) is that the app allows five separate layers. FlipNote only allowed two. For those unfamiliar with layering, it’s a term used in digital painting where each element of a picture sits on its own layer, allowing you to tinker with one and not worry about screwing up the others. In Colors! 3D, you switch between layers with the Circle Pad. As I recently discovered, you can also make upper layers transparent so you can work on individual back layers! This is excellent. So, I created a painting of Late Cretaceous Mongolia where the sky and one set of sand dunes were in back, another layer of dunes was in front of that, then a series of stone cliffs, and finally, two layers of pterosaurs flying by. What’s even better is that, because this is the 3DS, each layer you create is an actual layer in 3D space!

Once you’ve created your digital masterpiece, you can share it with the Colors! 3D community by signing up via the app’s interface (very simple) and uploading your paintings. From there, you can browse others' paintings and comment on them—I found a particularly beautiful painting based on the game Journey. An especially cool feature is that you can actually press “play” and watch the painter make his or her painting. You can even stop playback at a certain point and basically start a new painting from there! And if you have a friend in the room with you, you can both share a single painting project. This is SwapNote for artists. I highly recommend this app, and I think it will develop a big following among the 3DS artists out there.

Summary

Pros
  • Lots of artist tools
  • Lots of "hotkey" shortcuts
  • You can make—and share—shockingly detailed paintings
Cons
  • Lots of (by necessity) menu navigation
  • Touch screen isn't weight-sensitive, so you can't change line thickness organically

Talkback

AVApril 07, 2012

Zach you should send out your art to your 3DS friends on swapnote. That feature is fantastic and it looks great

SeacorApril 07, 2012

Just purchased this.  This is very impressive.

More PROS

Ability to Import images from 3DS
Ability to Export images to SD card (Options of 800x480 or 1600x960 resolution AND with or without 3D effects based on level of 3D depth slider - very cool!)
Seamlessly register your online gallery account from within the application
Impressive online community features (Rate, Make full comments, View Top Ranked and Best of the Week, View artists galleries, Copy images to your own gallery)

NeoStar9XApril 07, 2012

Nice. Makes me wish I had some drawing ability other then being able to sketch very simple objects. Even then the end result is questionable. Buying this would be worthless in the end no matter how good it is.  :(

Quote from: Seacor

Just purchased this.  This is very impressive.

More PROS

Ability to Import images from 3DS
Ability to Export images to SD card (Options of 800x480 or 1600x960 resolution AND with or without 3D effects based on level of 3D depth slider - very cool!)
Seamlessly register your online gallery account from within the application
Impressive online community features (Rate, Make full comments, View Top Ranked and Best of the Week, View artists galleries, Copy images to your own gallery)

Yeah, I need to try the exporting to SwapNote, at least. I'm very critical of my own work (that's why my Dream Game feature doesn't have art) so I'm not...thrilled with showing the world my scribbles.

AVApril 08, 2012

seriously zach you are great, those dino pictures you have drawn on swapnote are impressive. Makes me want to have DRAW SOMETHING for 3DS.


I sent everyone on my list my first drawing, that was only a tic tak toe board with the different layers  and its very simple drawing any 3 year old could have drawn.
'

ejamerApril 08, 2012

Quote from: Halbred

Yeah, I need to try the exporting to SwapNote, at least. I'm very critical of my own work (that's why my Dream Game feature doesn't have art) so I'm not...thrilled with showing the world my scribbles.

Surprised to hear this, and totally agree with A.Vega that your dino sketches are awesome. Don't sell yourself short (because when you do, it makes my chicken scratching look even less impressive).
;D

pololmejorApril 08, 2012

It's pretty tough to draw something on paper for me since I can't erase anything because I push the pencil to hard, and I like my own drawings on Swapnote, so I guess I'm getting this one.

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Genre
Developer Collecting Smiles
Players1 - 4

Worldwide Releases

na: Colors! 3D
Release Apr 05, 2012
PublisherCollecting Smiles
RatingEveryone
jpn: Colors! 3D
Release Aug 21, 2013
PublisherArc System Works
eu: Colors! 3D
Release Apr 19, 2012
PublisherCollecting Smiles
aus: Colors! 3D
Release Apr 19, 2012
PublisherCollecting Smiles

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