Unleashing the Artist Within: 3 Apps for Your Creative Mind

I keep finding myself smitten with apps that unleash the artist within, particularly when those apps have innovative features and are good for a wide variety of ages. Here are three–ok, *four–*apps that fit the bill.

Toontastic is an app that celebrates storytelling and puts all of the necessary tools for storytelling at your child's disposal. On the surface, there's a variety of background images and animation sprites that become your puppets as you tell a story. But the step-by-step creation of a cartoon makes you pause and think more about your creative process. First, there's the Story Arc. You can't just go willy-nilly making scenes. Do you want to make the story's setup, conflict, challenge, climax, or resolution? Kids can learn what these different story parts are, and then solidify that understanding by making the corresponding scene.

You create scenes by choosing a background or by drawing your own. Then choose characters for your scene. It's worth noting here that while the app is free, as are a handful of backgrounds and characters, you get a bigger set to choose from via in-app purchases. Themed packs are $0.99 and an all-access pass is $9.99. You should go ahead and think of this as a $10 app and go all-in, having lots to choose from. Once your background and characters are in place, you can start your animation. Then, in real time, move the characters around the scene as you give them dialog. The app records everything you're doing. Keep going with additional scenes, and add music and titles to your creation. Here's a movie that my 7-year-old made with Toontastic and uploaded to their Toon Tube.

I wish it was a little easier to control the movements of the characters, but my daughter seems to be happy with the controls. With younger kids in mind, Launchpad Toys just launched Toontastic, Jr. Pirates for ages 3-6. In a conversation I had with Andy Russell, creator of Launchpad Toys, Andy explained that the blank canvas was too much pressure for the little ones, so they designed a new platform. In this new app, there's a slot machine-style interface that serves up three different pirate scenes, each of which begins with an animated story starter. Kids can jump in where the story leaves off. One truly innovative feature in this new version came from what Andy called "the sharing gap." If you tell little kids they can share their story, they didn't have a clue that meant posting online for others to see. "Sharing a story" to little kids means doing a story together, and Toontastic, Jr. makes that a reality. Powered by Skype, two people can make an animation at the same time, even if separated by thousands of miles. You can hear and see what the other person is doing, and then join in the storytelling fun. Toontastic, Jr. Pirates is only $1.99, with no further in-app purchases.

Doodle.ly is an interesting app for older artists, as it also has a sharing feature, but one that only includes Facebook and Twitter. Doodle.ly wants to be your go-to sketchbook, and it equips you with only the types of drawing tools that you might have handy: pencils, markers, highlighters, and Sharpies. Those tools behave just as you'd expect. Talk about anxiety of a blank canvas, though. Here's a white screen that stares back at you, begging to be filled. For inspiration, check out the daily dose of doodles within the app and online at Doodle.ly. You can follow artists whose work you like, and I can see this being an interesting tool for illustrators who want a quick way to put ideas into the world.

I've been known to use this when I'm brainstorming for work and need a quick sketchpad app. To get around the fact that the only way to "save" is to post to Facebook and Twitter, I just take a screen capture of anything I want to remember but am not ready for the world to see. My daughter doesn't get to use this app, though, for two reasons. One, the Doodle.ly gallery often has stuff that I wouldn't want her seeing. Though moderated, the gallery has images made by people of all different maturity levels. Nothing's so awful, but there's the occasional crass or sexy or violent drawing, fine for older kids but not my 7-year-old. Two, she fills the photo gallery on our iPad with her creations from a variety of other apps. I'm not ready to fill my Facebook and Twitter feeds with her creations.

This is an app I'm delighted to have my 7-year-old use, and use it she does. I haven't checked the gallery in a while, and it's packed with even more of her creations. The app has several activities to get you started, with a bit of background about the artist who inspired that activity. Make a sound composition like Elizabeth Murray. Create a chance collage like Jean Arp. Draw with scissors like Matisse. Create a shape poem like Brice Marden. My daughter loves to create rooms and rooms of line designs like Jim Lambie, and I love that the app lets you create exquisite corpses like the Surrealists, an activity I'd previously introduced to my daughter on paper.

Outside of these specific activities, there's also a blank canvas where you can add shapes and draw on a variety of backgrounds. With the geometric and organic shapes provided, as well as a luscious saturated palette, this art lab gets you thinking about color and composition in a way that other drawing apps don't. If you're intimidated by the blank canvas, though, there are lots of ideas to get you started, like "Combine shapes and lines to make a monster" and "Draw for ten seconds without lifting your finger. Color in any shapes that were created."

We haven't been back to MoMA since my daughter started heavily using this app. My daughter still calls it the "Helicopter Museum" because there was a time when she was little when we'd go in, look at the helicopter hanging above the lobby for 45 minutes, grab a snack in the sculpture garden, and go home. My hope is that these lessons about the different artists spawn an interest in the paintings that lie beyond the helicopter.

The MoMA Art Lab is a bargain at $1.99.