Re: [Tuxpaint-devel] [Fwd: [K12OSN] TuxPaint 0.9.16 vs. KidPix a teachers perspective]

[Mark K. K. <mkk...@gm...>]

On Sat, Dec 16, 2006 at 12:28:43PM -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2006 at 02:22:28PM -0500, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> > See? People DO like actual photos. Cartoons are yucky.
> 
> Heh, I never argued with that.  I don't _mind_ cartoons, but I think kids
> are generally more excited about _real_ things.

I've had talks with people in the toy industry about this (which once
included myself.)  The consensus seems to be that the western kids
prefer realistic imagery over cartoonish imagery, whereas asian kids
prefer cartoonish imagery.

I think a good example of it is Street Fighter II (a Japanese product)
vs. Mortal Kombat (an American product).  Street Figher II did quite
well in the U.S., but Mortal Kombat, with its later entrance into the
market (I think) and less-than-smooth fighting sequence, still did quite
well in the U.S. market.  I don't even remember hearing a mention of
Mortal Kombat in Japan or Korea, though that could be because I ran in
a different circle.

[re: editable text feature]
> It really is one of the #1 requested features, though.  I'm not sure why,
> exactly.  It's always from school settings, of course.

Probably because people like to change their text.  It's something I
wanted to do with paint programs when I was little, too.  Texts stand
out distinctictly as individual objects in my mind that I wish to
manipulate as I paint.  It wasn't until I discovered poligon drawing
programs on Mac and PC (which has text manipulation post-insertion) I
realized text manipulation ruins bitmap painting program's paradigm.

I'm all for it if the two paradigms can be merged.  I'm not sure if it's
possible in any simple, elegant manner, though.

> > Consider changing the background after something has been drawn.
> > Go from white to black. How????
> 
> Wow, I had never considered that.
> Of course, I see it from this standpoint: why would you draw fish on
> a reef, and then suddenly decide you want the skyline behind the fish...?

Maybe it's a flyfish... =p

I don't know.  Changing background seems reasonable enough thing to do.
But I think Bill is concerned more about the complexity of the program
getting too much for kids to handle easily, which I do agree with.

-Mark