Artist Resources

For some ideas, please look at the artistic work page. If you would like to contribute to the project, please send an e-mail to Anne-Marie Mahfouf

Information for artists

Some suggestions for designing graphics

Here are some ideas for graphical and visual elements that could be used in the software:

• Design a mascot.
• Decide whether the mascot should evolve/change over time, for example to represent progress, or as the child grows?
• Could the mascot be animated to make it more interesting?
• Should the application have a common splash screen on starting?
• When starting the application, how does the software recognise a particular student? Perhaps the child should give his/her name. Design that interface.
• Icons (again, a consistency is needed)
• Design a screen for choosing the level
• Discuss and decide over a name for the application
• Graphical interface (define a general design of a KDE Edutainment app)
• Colours
• Fonts
• "Right" or "Wrong" indicators
• Design a quit screen

Particularly for very young children, educational software needs lots of animated and interesting graphics. Each project will list its specific needs and artists will have a lot of work!

A practical example

To give you an idea, we could have a game for children aged 3-5 called "What happens next?". A sequence of two actions as follows would be possible:

1. Dad grabbing a mug
2. Dad putting tea in the mug

Next, the child should choose one of the two following pictures: Dad drinking his tea or Dad reading the newspaper.

So we need an artist to draw the pictures. Ideally, the artist should work with the developer to gain information about the type and size of images required. The kde-edu mailing list will be key in co-ordinating this.

Possibly a parent or a teacher could also provide input to get an overall idea of what a child of this age may like.

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Author: Anne-Marie Mahfouf
Last update: 2008-01-11