Wowzer. Little did I expect so much from a paint tool when it came from Nintendo. I'm here to review Colors 3D, A downloadable tool in the Nintendo Eshop (for a price).
Now many people probably aren't good at using a tablet, therefore, they aren't that great when it comes to drawing on the DS or 3DS. Due to this, they probably won't want a tool like Colors 3D. I was one of these people. Due to getting a free eshop card for 20 dollars though, I decided to get it. My first impressions of it were actually pretty high. I like the small 3d art concept of it. You can be very creative with landscape drawings if you wanted to draw something like that. The tool is designed with 5 layers that all have a different depth when the 3D depth filter is on. The top layer being the closest and the bottom one being the furthest.
Now, again, I'm not good when it comes to drawing on these. I can't really use the 3D boost of this tool to it's advantage. That's ok though! Those layers don't have to be used for 3D if you don't want to. Most of you who have used a tool with layers on the computer probably draw the outline of things then use a layer under it for color and one over it for specific details or something like that. You can use these layers for that precise purpose. Not only does that help when it comes to new drawers on a 3DS, but advanced graphic designers can do much with this. The layering also allows copying a layer to another without deleting what's already on the layer being copied to. You can also completely delete what's on a layer if you wish.
Not appealing yet? There's still much to go through. This tool has an UNLIMITED undo and redo. Unlimited. Thats like. More than 5. Compared to Microsoft Paint. This is incredibly useful. Though, as a warning, the undo does take longer to execute the more undoing at a time you.. do. For example, if I used undo 10 times before doing anything else, after the 7th undo or so, a small loading icon will show and it takes a bit longer to undo from there on. But, it's still better than being limited completely.
But wait! there's more! There's transparency options you can set your brush with. Say you want that light blue water to have something in it that's already in the layer beneath it. Just lower your opacity on your brush and you're good to go! see-through light blue! You also can change the brush size to your liking. It's virtually unlimited in size possibility up to like.. well. a really large brush. You have the full color spectrum at your disposal too.
Now you're probably thinking: "Hmm. Neat stuff and all, but it's still too small of a screen to work on". You're right there. If you don't have a 3DS XL, it's a little harder to draw on such a small screen. But wait. What's that? Colors 3D has a zoom feature! That's right, a ZOOM feature! This zoom feature is limited in some ways, but still 100% useful. Let me explain. What's limited about the zoom is setting how zoomed in you want to be. There are 5 zoom options. 33% (if drawing on a top screen wide canvas, will show whole thing on bottom screen this zoomed out), 50%, 100%, 200%, and 400%. You are limited to these 5 zooms and can not zoom lets say 150%. Either way though, this zoom feature, especially being able to go as close as 400%, helps a ton when it comes to connecting and drawing lines on such a small screen. To pan around when zoomed in is easy. Just hold left and pan around using the stylus. It's very conveniently organized.
Something interesting here. Colors 3D has it's own online gallery where you can upload your pictures to their gallery. You can view their gallery straight through the tool itself. If you're looking to see some 3D pictures, be sure to have the slider on, for a lot of the pictures there aren't utilizing the 3D effect ironically enough. An added bonus, you can watch the progress of the picture being created when viewing it through the 3DS. It will show everything too; erases, layer removal or changing, that stuff (I don't know about undo though). It displays it in a similar manner to swapnote but you can control the speeds and, as I said, see erases that were made unlike swapnote. Watching well done pictures and how they were make gives great ideas on making great images of your own.
Now, there are a few things that people might want that the tool doesn't have. The things Colors 3D lacks that would primarily be on most painting tools is a paint bucket (also known as fill tool), select and deselect, no more than 5 layers, only 3 different brush styles, and other things, but these are tools you can make due without if you use it right.
I think Colors 3D is well worth the money. It's helping me practice drawing on a 3DS as well. I give Colors 3D a 10 out of 10 for it's extensive amount of abilities and the features I would never come to expect from something like this. If you pondered whether to get Colors 3D, take my word for it, it's well worth it.
Now many people probably aren't good at using a tablet, therefore, they aren't that great when it comes to drawing on the DS or 3DS. Due to this, they probably won't want a tool like Colors 3D. I was one of these people. Due to getting a free eshop card for 20 dollars though, I decided to get it. My first impressions of it were actually pretty high. I like the small 3d art concept of it. You can be very creative with landscape drawings if you wanted to draw something like that. The tool is designed with 5 layers that all have a different depth when the 3D depth filter is on. The top layer being the closest and the bottom one being the furthest.
Now, again, I'm not good when it comes to drawing on these. I can't really use the 3D boost of this tool to it's advantage. That's ok though! Those layers don't have to be used for 3D if you don't want to. Most of you who have used a tool with layers on the computer probably draw the outline of things then use a layer under it for color and one over it for specific details or something like that. You can use these layers for that precise purpose. Not only does that help when it comes to new drawers on a 3DS, but advanced graphic designers can do much with this. The layering also allows copying a layer to another without deleting what's already on the layer being copied to. You can also completely delete what's on a layer if you wish.
Not appealing yet? There's still much to go through. This tool has an UNLIMITED undo and redo. Unlimited. Thats like. More than 5. Compared to Microsoft Paint. This is incredibly useful. Though, as a warning, the undo does take longer to execute the more undoing at a time you.. do. For example, if I used undo 10 times before doing anything else, after the 7th undo or so, a small loading icon will show and it takes a bit longer to undo from there on. But, it's still better than being limited completely.
But wait! there's more! There's transparency options you can set your brush with. Say you want that light blue water to have something in it that's already in the layer beneath it. Just lower your opacity on your brush and you're good to go! see-through light blue! You also can change the brush size to your liking. It's virtually unlimited in size possibility up to like.. well. a really large brush. You have the full color spectrum at your disposal too.
Now you're probably thinking: "Hmm. Neat stuff and all, but it's still too small of a screen to work on". You're right there. If you don't have a 3DS XL, it's a little harder to draw on such a small screen. But wait. What's that? Colors 3D has a zoom feature! That's right, a ZOOM feature! This zoom feature is limited in some ways, but still 100% useful. Let me explain. What's limited about the zoom is setting how zoomed in you want to be. There are 5 zoom options. 33% (if drawing on a top screen wide canvas, will show whole thing on bottom screen this zoomed out), 50%, 100%, 200%, and 400%. You are limited to these 5 zooms and can not zoom lets say 150%. Either way though, this zoom feature, especially being able to go as close as 400%, helps a ton when it comes to connecting and drawing lines on such a small screen. To pan around when zoomed in is easy. Just hold left and pan around using the stylus. It's very conveniently organized.
Something interesting here. Colors 3D has it's own online gallery where you can upload your pictures to their gallery. You can view their gallery straight through the tool itself. If you're looking to see some 3D pictures, be sure to have the slider on, for a lot of the pictures there aren't utilizing the 3D effect ironically enough. An added bonus, you can watch the progress of the picture being created when viewing it through the 3DS. It will show everything too; erases, layer removal or changing, that stuff (I don't know about undo though). It displays it in a similar manner to swapnote but you can control the speeds and, as I said, see erases that were made unlike swapnote. Watching well done pictures and how they were make gives great ideas on making great images of your own.
Now, there are a few things that people might want that the tool doesn't have. The things Colors 3D lacks that would primarily be on most painting tools is a paint bucket (also known as fill tool), select and deselect, no more than 5 layers, only 3 different brush styles, and other things, but these are tools you can make due without if you use it right.
I think Colors 3D is well worth the money. It's helping me practice drawing on a 3DS as well. I give Colors 3D a 10 out of 10 for it's extensive amount of abilities and the features I would never come to expect from something like this. If you pondered whether to get Colors 3D, take my word for it, it's well worth it.
