Our crack team of work experience students, Niamh Rothwell and Áine Valentine, took a copy of Animation Studio for a test run this week.  Taking time from learning the animation ropes, our future bosses got busy creating an animation of their own.

Animation Studio is great - with everything you need in the box to begin creating stories and short animation. We had fun testing it and were really impressed by so much!

From the step one you have total freedom to create anything - starting with characters, and the myriad of options on how they will look. The scene options are great, some are filled with colour and features while others rely on the story. The beach scene was sparse, great for being creative, but we felt it could have used a few more props. (A rare complaint for this toy!) There are other, more fantastic, options including the space scene (duly voted as our favourite) and the massively detailed Haunted House, complete with its own trapdoor.

The props and material are all visually strong… unfortunately that didn't translate to them physically. Many of the pieces were flimsy and not strong enough to stand by themselves, and in the case of using modelling clay, we would have loved to see some included! (Speaking of inclusions - a small roll of double-sided tape to build the characters was invaluable!!)

It was easy-to-use, informative and proved to be the perfect treat for a few hours (while in an animation studio).

Recommended for any animators 8 to 80!