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Art Academy (JP) also known as Art Academy: Learn painting and drawing techniques with step-by-step training in the PAL regions and Artistic Taste Classroom DS is a DS video game developed by Headstrong Games and published by Nintendo. The game is compilation of the two DSiWare games, Art Academy: First Semester and Art Academy: Second Semester.
Gameplay
The game is an art training simulation which can help anyone improve their art skills with techniques that can be applied to real-life pictures and paintings. The game has two modes of use; Lessons and Free Paint.
When the player starts, he will only have access to the Pencil in Lessons. The player takes lessons from Vince to improve their skills an after progressing through each lesson, gain new tools. Some lessons have additional mini-lessons which expand on the techniques a bit. After completing a Lesson, the player can store the art pieces in the Gallery.
In Free Paint, players have access to all the tools and draw or paint anything they can and even save their art to be worked on later. In this mode, the player has access to an image gallery to serve as references or take pictures using the DSi Camera. Once a player has finished their work, they can select a frame to decorate their work. Once the frame has been decided on, the picture can no longer be edited.
Differences from DSiWare
The retail version has 3 new mini lessons in addition to the lessons from the original games, the image gallery of 89 reference photos and 20 frames instead of 10 for paintings.
The main missing feature is the ability to import and export from the SD card.
Reception
The critical reception has been relatively favorable upon the release, Metacritic gave the game a 75, based on the reviews from 15 critics.