Disney Art Academy for Nintendo 3DS

As a Nintendo Ambassador I have received free product from Nintendo to facilitate this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. My experience may differ from your own. You can read my full disclosure policy here.

Nintendo recently sent us a 3DS to dig into some of their new games and share them with you and we are loving this one! Disney Art Academy is not only fun, but it’s really educational. I’ve been fortunate to attend a number of Disney Studios press events and meet some of these story artists that create our beloved Disney characters. Learning how they are drawn is so much fun and allows you to see your favorite films in a whole new way!

Getting Started

As you can see on the image above, there are 3 options on the home screen: Free Paint, Lessons, and Clubhouse. I’ll give you a peek at each of those – read on!

First I want to mention that this Disney Art Academy starts you at a beginner level and as you work through each lesson, new content is unlocked to move you into more advanced techniques. That means kids have success creating Disney characters right away, which we all know makes them want to learn more!

Free Paint

Free paint will show you a character of your choosing on the top screen and you draw it on the bottom screen. It only displays small bits at a time, so for example, I drew Mickey’s face, and then hit the right arrow button. The top screen then added his torso.

There are a bunch of tools on the screen that allow you to vary your color, drawing tool, and more!

Lessons

Lessons are really my favorite part! I find this so interesting. See the screen in the pic above that says, “We’ve learned that chubby cheeks and large eyes are a good basis for a cute face.” Those are the kinds of things I think are so neat to learn. How do you make a face look a certain way? Display a certain emotion?

Here’s an example of some of the concepts shared in drawing Sadness. “You’ll notice that Sadness’s color palette is made up of blue and other cool colors.” So little artists can learn how color is used to create emotion, beauty, contrast, and more.

Once each lesson is shared, artists have a chance to draw and try their hand at putting the technique into practice.

The Clubhouse

The Clubhouse is really you gallery, where you can save and share your favorite masterpieces! My daughter drew this Minnie. She is clearly better at this than I am. 😉

Take a look at the demo below to see how to navigate this fun and educational game!