You know what’s funny? If you Google “how do you get kids to learn” (sans quotes, even), the first result goes to this TechCrunch blog post about an app that lets kids draw butts on the iPad. Really! The post details the company called Madbrook (aka Everything Butt Art), which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May. It’s the brand behind a series of printed books, all of which are meant to teach creativity and step-by-step drawing while using humor and silliness to appeal to the young demographic. Now, the iPad app promised at Disrupt has finally arrived. The company’s first digital creation, Butt Art -Kids Learn to Draw Zoo Animals Step-by-Step, has gone live in the App Store. OK, seriously. Butts? Yes, butts. The interactive app teaches drawing by starting everything with a butt shape (a rounded, lowercase w). The end result is not actually a picture of a butt, mind you, Read More

You know what’s funny? If you Google “how do you get kids to learn” (sans quotes, even), the first result goes to this TechCrunch blog post about an app that lets kids draw butts on the iPad. Really! The post details the company called Madbrook (aka Everything Butt Art), which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May. It’s the brand behind a series of printed books, all of which are meant to teach creativity and step-by-step drawing while using humor and silliness to appeal to the young demographic. Now, the iPad app promised at Disrupt has finally arrived. The company’s first digital creation, Butt Art -Kids Learn to Draw Zoo Animals Step-by-Step, has gone live in the App Store. OK, seriously. Butts? Yes, butts. The interactive app teaches drawing by starting everything with a butt shape (a rounded, lowercase w). The end result is not actually a picture of a butt, mind you, Read More

What’s the best way to get kids to draw? Well, you can start by having them draw butts. Yep, that’s the premise behind a new iPad app from New York start-up Madbrook that is launching its Butt Art – Kids Learn to Draw Zoo Animals Step-by-Step app today, joining two Everything Butt Art physical children’s books the company already has in bookstores. The hook behind the free app might sound a little gimmicky but the company has some interesting ideas about how to make drawing more interactive and engaging not only for kids but their parents. The app starts with the idea that kids can learn by drawing the shape of a butt, which can become the basis for a lot of pictures and objects. The app is equipped with a lot of the simple arts tools you would expect in a drawing app, like paintbrushes, pencils, erasers, colors and stickers. But Read More

by It might strike you as strange that Brian Snyder’s series of coloring books teach children how to draw cartoon characters by starting with a butt shape. But when you open the iPad app version, launching on Thursday, it becomes apparent that Snyder’s new approach to coloring books extends far beyond butts. Though it shares its characters and an illustrator (Alexis Moniello) with Snyder’s Everything Butt Art at the Zoo, which is distributed nationally in Barnes and Noble bookstores, the app is also a platform for step-by-step animated drawing tutorials, a game, an online archive and a sharing tool. When Snyder’s five-year-old daughter Madeline finishes a drawing on the app, for instance, he immediately gets an email with the artwork embedded. “I see that Madeline is drawing in real time,” he says “It connects you in this way that’s hard to describe.” The drawing is also saved in a private or Read More