Memories and a History of Kid Pix

(note - I originally created this post for Extreme Randomness - a site co-produced with my cousin that's a lot more silly than my blog, however it is of interest to the techie audience too - especially those of you with artsy techie kids)

Who in here has memories of Kid Pix? I'm probably dating myself somewhat, but I remember being really excited when I finally got Kid Pix after waiting a LONG time for it. It was the coolest thing ever. Today, not so much. There's now cheap pen tablets, and much better software out there that kids will have far more fun with. But Kid Pix, well, Kid Pix redefined art and painting on the computer and made it *fun* - very fun. In fact, Kid Pix was one of those things that I would say changed how I view art.

By chance, today I found a great history of Kid Pix written by the program's author, Craig Hickman, you can read it here. It brought back some memories, and made me remember why I liked computers even. They were a unique tool that redefined what is possible. They allowed your imagination to explore new areas. Oh, and yeah, that's why I see computers as more of an art tool - I'm not a traditional math computer geek. I hate math, and I can't do it well. And no, I couldn't program "hello world" even to save my life. But Kid Pix? Now, that was amazing.

For your young artist today? Well, the version of Kid Pix linked to above is interesting, but honestly a waste of $39. The current Windows version is even worse, though cheap. Now, you can get a cheap Wacom Bamboo Pen tablet for about $65, which comes with Corel's Painter Essentials. This natural paint program blows away Kid Pix. There's other great tools for kids to explore with, such as MyPaint -which is free and can be made full screen like Kid Pix. There's Autodesk Sketchbook, a great natural media sketching program. There's the full-on amazing Corel Painter. There's even Craig Hickman's Beautiful Dorena, which is wacky and fun - and reminds me a bit of the original one-man-project Kid Pix getting all grown up. But it all started with Kid Pix.