We were sceptical at first of Pokémon Art Academy, given that limiting our artistic talents to drawing Pokémon is like telling Van Gogh to stick just to flowers. There's a Pikachu-shaped hole in the art market, though, so why not give the people what they want?
Pokémon Art Academy offers three levels of difficulty to get through to become a master of... er, drawing Pokémon. Beginning with simple, head-on portraits of Piplup and working up through various tools, such as the pastel and paintbrush, you'll learn how to build on your basic sketches and work with the full colour palette to create recognisable characters.
Later levels experiment with techniques - shading and hatching, say - and the hardest lessons at the end ask you to draw freehand, but still following the gentle nudge of a step-by-step guide. Each level ends with a finale, a drawing of Pikachu that requires the methods learned.
Each effort is transferred onto a Pokémon Trading Card upon completion, with the option to add a background for added oomph. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results; if you follow the lessons closely, your artwork may look ridiculous or terrible to you right up to the moment where you see it presented on a card, at which point it takes on a nicely professional appearance and is something to be proud of.
We found the lessons challenging, fun and educational in the best of ways, but the game can be both too easy and too hard. The earlier stages are extremely simplistic, but can't be skipped, while the end levels expect you to just be able to draw well without ever explaining things like proportions, or expressions. Novices might find the teaching lacking for this reason: once the safety net of guidelines is taken away, there's only a reference picture to rely upon.
More experienced artists might be irritated by the lack of tools. Layers are semi-possible, in that the outline pen always sits on top of the rest, but planes can't be switched at will. If you want a background, for example, you must draw it painstakingly in around the edges. It's a shame, but only a very minor gripe.
Free paint and quick sketch modes open up the possibilities beyond the lessons available and more Pokémon will be downloadable as you go. Free paint mode leaves your imagination to run free, but quick sketch limits your tools based on how simple the drawing is.
At first, the frustration of the 3DS's tiny screen and the fiddly stylus being your only artist's tool will make you come close to cutting off your own ear. Switch to a chunkier stylus and get used to the controls and it improves; the developers clearly knew the limitations of the handheld platform and tried to make the controls as helpful and unobtrusive as possible.
Though it sits in the middle of being ideal for beginners and experts, fulfilling neither category perfectly, Pokémon Art Academy is lovely to play, never punishing you for imperfect work, encouraging and helping you to better your drawing. It's limited to Pokémon, but the simple shapes and bright colours are as good a place to start as any. Prepare your digital pencils.
In the interest of honesty, we should probably tell you that all these pictures were created by us. Yeah.
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