Coosi Box : Creative Drawing

It is hard to know where to begin with Coosi Box.  In fact it is a little hard to know how to begin.  The parent’s page, usually something visited last when using an app for the first time, is actually very useful as there are some decidedly non-standard interactions in this app, and they are explained here.  For example to save a drawing you must hold an arrow button for 3 seconds.

Drawings - so this is an art app?  Sort of.  First you select a template: a fruit tree, a dinner plate, a train track, there are many.  But then you find yourself at a blank canvas with some basic drawing tools.  Essentially these tools are variable line thicknesses and a selection of colours.  But why did you choose the template?  Once you have worked out that save button, you are part way to discovering this – unfortunately you may find that you have also saved some random scribbles for the whole world to see.  What happens is that when you have saved the pictures they are meshed with the template and in another section of the app you can view them.  Let’s say you have drawn an apple on the canvas you went to after selecting the dinner plate.  You’ll see your apple being eaten on the plate.  If you’d selected the fruit tree you’ll see apples on the tree.  Tap them and they’ll fall.  If you’d selected the railway, your apple will come screaming along the train tracks.

The section in which the drawings are brought to life is also a gateway to the rest of the world’s pictures.  In there, as well as your own pictures, you will see everybody else’s and be able to view them in their animations.  Actually, when you get your head around how it all works, it is a great deal of fun.  Seeing how your picture becomes part of the animation is surprisingly interesting.  Children will definitely love doing this as it turns their static art into an animated and sometimes interactive experience.  The big issue here is that the gallery can’t be supervised all of the time.  The simple art tools are certainly not going to allow anything too extreme but words and simple shapes can certainly be made that leave a content that is not child friendly.  These are, no doubt, dealt with in time by the app’s administrators, but they can persist at least for a while.

Throughout the app, changing screens brings up a little motto that after a while you realise are tips.  At first ‘Your kid’s confidence is more important than heart numbers’ seems like a strangely translated educationalist quote, but eventually you realise that it relates to how the gallery works.  Children can ‘like’ another child’s picture and can see how many likes their own has received.  These are the hearts.

This app is certainly different.  There’s an almost surreal quality to it.  From the style of the included artwork, the animations, the sound effects and even those slightly off kilter phrases that appear, it exudes quirkiness.  Once you add in a child’s imagination to what the animations are based around it becomes anything from cute to bizarre to oddly disturbing.  It is however extremely entertaining and quite addictive.  This will only increase as further templates are promised to be added.

The best advice any review of this app can give is to just try it.  It is a free download and there is just no other way to appreciate what it is about.  Just remember that whatever you draw and save becomes visible to the world!

You can download Coosi Box : Creative Drawing on your iOS devices from the Apple App Store.