Crayola Color Alive Easy Animation Studio, Gift for Kids, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

I bought this as an afterthought to use on a rainy day. My 7yo son loves it. He doesn’t really like coloring but he does like that he can dress his monsters. The stop animation is easy enough for him to do by himself and he loves manipulating the model-man, whom he has named The Green Guy. He has made dozens of hilarious zombie videos. The technology is pretty cool! I think more kids should have this. You do need a tablet or phone to make this work and it did seem to use more battery power than most apps probably because the camera is on and scanning for long periods of time. Totally worth the low price, we’ve already gotten hours of creative play out of it.

What a horrible gift! We bought this for my daughter for her birthday because every time we did a search for stop animation, this product came up. We just tried to use it for the first time and found out there is no app to make the animation live/work. It says discontinued by manufacturer. so it's basically useless and the time has lapsed for us to get our money back. We paid money for a skimpy (few page coloring book) and a pint sized mannequin. Big disappointment.

This was not compatible with my son's tablet (Nivda), so he used it on my husband's tablet, so that was a disappointment. You have to buy the coloring books that are color alive, and the pictures you color will show up on the tablet. We choose this because we were looking for a gift that was not a video game, so it definitely helped with that.

The media could not be loaded. First of all be sure to download the COLOR ANIMATION STUDIO APP rather than the COLOR ALIVE APP. It doesn't make any sense, but after an hour I finally called and Crayola Support was very helpful. The app is fun and easy enough for my five year old to do exclusively himself. Of course it is choppy and takes some playing around with to figure out how to add various scenes to create a movie. The book does work with the app and allows you to add in scenes from anywhere. This is hours of fun for my aspiring movie director and every bit worth the price.

The Crayola Easy Animator is a cool idea that ended up being a huge letdown. First, it is NOT Android device friendly, despite Amazon saying it is. A call to Crayola for assistance proved to be of little value. Uninstalling and reinstalling the app did no good, but I did read during the reinstall a large number of google play store users complaining of the same problems.The first was the "scan" feature that used the devices camera to capture the images into the animator app. It didn't work. Tapping the screen until your finger was raw did no good and pressing buttons on the side of the device thinking the app changed the button that actuates the camera shutter was just as ineffective.Moving on to just using the premade characters in the app rather than scanning in those from the book unearthed the second and probably most important problem. The program could not properly photograph Manny the humanoid figure included with the animator. Attempting to photograph Manny could only be done with the front facing camera. No option was given to switch to the rear camera. Which meant you either had to place Manny between you and the camera (awkward) or you had to turn the camera around with the devices back facing you which meant you couldn't see what you were photographing (even more awkward).The latter was most frustrating because in addition to the app forcing you to use the wrong camera, it could not accurately track Manny either. Holding the device upright lead to an onscreen warning that the device was upside down and the cartoon Manny on the screen continually convoluted himself as if he was bent over and doubled up... but he kept his legs straight. Turning the device upside down, the warning went away, but now cartoon Manny's legs were twisted and bent up as if he was trying to sit Indian style, while his arms and torso were fine. All the while Manny is standing straight as a bolt in his stand.No amount of manipulation of Manny, the device or the app could get the animator to work properly.Ultimately the Crayola Easy Animator was boxed back up and returned to Amazon for a refund. It is not Android compatible and Crayola's customer service, while friendly and polite, is completely ill-equipped to handle the problem solving required when product of this nature malfunctions.I did however give the Crayola Easy Animator three stars instead of one because... Typical to Crayola the packaging is first rate, Manny is held in a clear container on the face of the box so it's a little harder to wrap but, everything inside appeared to be of decent quality and the coloring book containing the characters is kids sized and ring bound so it doesn't take up a lot of space and sits flat when you attempt to photograph it. And Manny himself is awesome. Flexible and fully poseable with a little stand to capture airborne action poses, I would love to have Manny just on his own, his little soft plastic body is just adorable and would make an awesome toy by itself!

This was my 9yo favorite Christmas present. I was shocked at how cool it really was. She figured the entire thing out by herself, and brought in the final result. I was floored to see the guy she had made dance around to music she had made herself. I'm so glad we bought this. Since it is a little pricey, I wish it had come with more coloring sheets. It did give her hours of fun!

Buyer beware! Bought this for my 9 yr old brother for Christmas, says compatible with android, iOS, Windows, but will not work with anything unless you have the NEWEST version of software. Contacted company and they said there is no other versions of the app/program available and that we should up grade our devices. (We were trying to install it on a Kindle that had the latest upgrade available, and it kept telling us it was too old to run the program) Real big disappointment. My brother was so sad that he didn't get to play with this and make his own animations!

The app crashes constantly and you lose your saved progress. The camera doesn't recognize the character. This is with an iPhone 4s with updated software. My 8 year old daughter was so frustrated because she bought this with money given to her for her birthday. She wants to know if I can send it back for a refund. Frustrated as Crayola usually has quality products and this is not one of them. Reviews were strong but the product is weak.