In Mickey’s Magical Arts World you are invited to use your imagination and a digital art tool set to create your own character and watch them come to life in animated world alongside Mickey Mouse and other friends as well as develop your own animated world. Mickey’s Magical Arts World is comprised of 5 inter-connected experiences:
· Mickey’s Sketch Artist
· Donald’s Costume Play
· Mickey’s Music Maker
· Minnie’s Art-chitect
· Pluto’s Crafty Creator
In Mickey’s Sketch Artist you can use various digital tools such as paintbrush or crayon to create your own character. You are provided a similar gingerbread man type template as a starting point. I don’t consider myself as having artistic skills and yet somehow utilizing that basic template I can create adorable characters to wander the animated world. In Donald’s Costume Play you can give your character a new hairstyle or make a wardrobe change. Then move on over to Pluto’s Crafty Creator to place your character into a classic Disney moment. Available in the free zone is a clip from the 1937 short “Magician Mickey.” After recording a few magic phrases as prompted by Donald and Daisy the clip came to life with our character and dialogue. The experience reminded us of Disney Cruise Line highlight — Animator’s Palette. It’s a lot of fun to see simple squiggles come to life alongside Mickey Mouse.
Pluto’s Crafty Creator offers a digital exploration of mixed media creations. In the free zone we were able to dip our character (a kind of cat figure with round ears). It was fun to see what happened when we tried the cheese dip vs. the confetti dip or dipping several times vs. a single time. Given the variety available once purchase this level was the most enticing for the in-app purchase during our initial play session. Over in Mickey’s Music Maker have fun with rhythm and tempo as you assemble your town parade. You can select the melody, the speed of your march and the instruments in your parade. Our parade featured the “Wheels on the Bus” a flute, tuba, guitar and drum set.
Finally in what I think was the favorite of my son’s Minnie’s Art-chitect we explored building design by repainting the town’s buildings in solids or patterns. Designers can also add additional doors and windows.
Back at the apps main menu – a Main Street style setting – we could see our creations as part of the magical world. We could see our parade marching by the building we designed. Our animal critter and character could also be found. With the in-app purchases your ability to redesign the Main Street is increased as the Sketch Artist offers many more templates to fill such as trees, clouds, etc that would then be featured on this menu page.
We did experience a few crashes while playing around the app but in each case it was at the conclusion of our activity and we didn’t lose our creations.
As with other Disney apps you can explore introductory elements of each world without cost. Our experiences above were within those free zones. You can purchase the complete Mickey’s Magical Arts World package for $19.99 or each world individually at $4.99.