Pokémon Art Academy teaches you how to draw. It slowly fosters basic techniques early in the game, and every subsequent lesson utilizes them while also adding to those skills. The first assignment is the aforementioned Pikachu portrait. This test familiarizes you with core mechanics of the game, such as the tool menu and undo/redo commands. Once completed, players are given novice lessons, which highlight new techniques and art tools.
To ease you into the challenge of learning an art, Pokémon Art Academy $29.99 at Dell introduces your foil right at the beginning: an energetic and upbeat boy named Lee. Despite his enthusiasm, Lee is an absolutely atrocious artist. In fact, the only way to draw worse than Lee is to actually try to do badly. In this way, players needn't worry about sub-par art skills, as they are always one step ahead of their classmate.
Pokémon Art Academy's early assignments impose an image template of the subject on the 3DS's lower screen that you can trace and color to complete the drawing. Later courses remove those crutches by teaching you to create construction shapes to define the build of your Pokémon. The squid-like Inkay is one such example. Rather than giving you a silhouette to trace, the game requires you to draw the subject's general shape on your own, using only an image and a few basic shapes and dotted lines as a guide.
In addition to major assignments, courses also feature side-lessons, which are essentially mini-assignments or homework. You don't need to complete these to advance to the next grade-level, but they help to reinforce the techniques that are learned in that course. It's not a bad idea to try your hand at them.
After a basic full-body portrait final exam, players can advance to the Apprentice courses. These lessons teach you how to apply shading and highlights to subjects, and open up new artistic tools. Colored pencils and hatching techniques are covered in one lesson, while free-form style and paintbrush techniques are covered in another. The final combines elements from the apprentice lessons while also teaching you how to combine background color into shading to create a natural-looking piece of art.
Once you have a grasp of these techniques and tools, you advance to graduate courses, which teach advanced highlighting, shading, and unique styles, like comic-book art or texture-heavy pastel portraits. Graduate courses remove all crutches—courses no longer give you free construction outlines to guide you. Instead, you must draw your own skeletons and outlines using only an image on the top screen of the 3DS as a guide.
Progressing through the courses creates a very rewarding sense of accomplishment as a result of the pacing and lesson structure. Players with some artistic skill can focus on main assignments and move on to more challenging tests, while beginners can practice with the side-lessons to round out their techniques. Pokémon Art Academy creates a fantastic learning and practice environment for novice and amateur artists alike.
In addition to the Pokémon oriented artwork, you can import images from an SD card to create custom art templates in free-paint mode. This gives you a much greater range of artistic freedom, since you do not need to adhere to Pokémon artwork in this mode. Players can also share their art or browse the works of others through Miiverse.
If Everyone's a Winner, No One is a Winner
Pokémon Art Academy's biggest flaw is the lack of a grading system. The game is geared towards a younger audience—this is apparent by the youthful foil, the bright and colorful aesthetic, and menus and the light-hearted dialogue. Rather than scoring players, the game offers kind words and encouragement from the professor regardless of how closely they emulated the template artwork.
This also undermines the instructive value of the game, as you can carelessly slop together whatever mess you want during a lesson without receiving any constructive feedback beyond a generic "good job." The lack of grading also lessens the incentive to go back and retry previous assignments, unless your commitment and passion compels you to do so.
A Great Tool for Budding Artists
If you are trying to learn a bit of drawing and painting, Pokémon Art Academy is a fine introductory title. Despite being geared towards a younger audience, the game has a wealth of tips and techniques that players can pick up and practice with. The judgment-free approach to teaching makes for relaxing art sessions, though the lack of critiquing is disappointing if you're hungry for feedback. But, overall, Pokémon Art Academy is a fun and satisfying art tutor.
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