Home Tweet Home Interactive Coloring Book

Overview

Home Tweet Home is exactly what it says it is -- an interactive coloring book. You can paint and print classic Looney Tunes images featuring Tweety Bird and other characters. While lacking the depth of other artist programs such as Disney’s Magic Artist, which allows you to do a lot of different types of art projects, Home Tweet Home focuses on painting tools and has some fun "extras," such as animated textures and crazy tools which apply paint to the picture in unique ways. You can save your images or print them out to a color printer. There are also several panoramic images as well as a dot-to-dot feature. It lacks the variety of elements to be a true computer artist program, however.

Gameplay, Controls, Interface

As with other titles in the SouthPeak line, this game is incredibly easy to navigate for even the youngest users. My kindergartner was able to figure out what everything does on his own. Especially helpful is Voices On/Off feature. When turned on, you will hear the name of each tool as you point your mouse at it (I can think of several programs, games and otherwise, which could benefit from such a feature). There is an Art Machine which controls most of the operations of the game. It is from the machine that you select the image to be painted and choose other options.

One thing I really liked in this package was how the Fill feature worked. Instead of merely filling an area with a specific color, it automatically adds nuances of color, like shadows, highlights and textures in some cases. You could paint an entire scene orange and not end up with a solid orange page; it would have texture and shading and really come out quite nicely. My kindergartner thought the animated textures (such as fireworks and snowflakes) were cool, but I think his favorite was the Paint Cannon where in one fell swoop you get a randomly-selected pattern of fill colors and textures applied to your picture. It looks like a paintball war gone crazy.

Graphics

This game does not have the demanding graphics of other types of games; however, they are crisp and clear and print very well.

Audio

Music and sound effects are not integral to play. You can turn the voice command on and off, but the other sounds, which consists of a variety of "automation" sounds, are very nice.

System Requirements

Pentium 133 or above, Windows 95/98, 16 MB RAM (32 recommended), 4X CD-ROM drive, 50 MB free disk space (or 100 for full installation), 16-bit SVGA graphics adapter, 2 MB VRAM (strongly recommended), Microsoft-compatible mouse, 16-bit Windows-compatible sound card, color printer recommended for printing images.

We did have to reconfigure our color printer (a Canon BJC-620) in order for the images to print correctly. When set on the highest photographic quality setting, the colors came out completely wrong. The program does not have any way to adjust colors, but we were able to lower our print quality directly at the printer level and have the printouts match what was on the screen.

Documentation

The documentation consisted of the liner notes in the CD case. It covers the different icons and what they do. With a program as simple as this, you really don’t need much more.

Bottom Line

Although Home Tweet Home does not have the broad appeal of more mainstream artist programs, its extras and innovations are well done. One thing I must say that SouthPeak does very well in all the products I’ve seen is implementation of a theme. The Tweety Bird theme here is seamlessly integrated throughout, and all the elements of the program are true to the spirit of the Looney Tunes. I gave it an 80 based on its innovations and its integration of the theme. A freehand drawing module, the ability to place Looney Tunes characters in scenes of your own creation, or other creative elements would have made this program more well-rounded and would have increased its rating to 85 or 90. Though the game is rated E for all ages, I would recommend this product for children in the 5 to 12 year range.