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Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s Summer of Mac Gems series. Each business day until the middle of August 2008, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
With more and more Saturday morning cartoons and animated films using 3-D art, don’t be surprised if Junior won’t settle for 2-D drawing tools. Impara’s Plopp is a drawing tool for kids that not only makes 3-D easy, but it makes it fun, too.
Just draw your figure in 2-D, and then click on a bicycle pump icon to “blow up” your figure into 3-D. Don’t like a figure? You can “pop” it with a virtual pin.
Unfortunately, Plopp’s on-screen interface is stuck at 800-by-600 resolution and there are no animation tools, but you can print your creations, export them as JPEG images, or send the pic via e-mail from within Plopp.
Plopp comes with pre-made characters and backgrounds, and once you buy a registration code, you can download more from the developer for free.