Lights, Camera, Play!

Toontastic is a creative storytelling app that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world. With over 14 million cartoons created in 200+ countries, parents and teachers rave about the app… and kids can’t stop creating!

The app received several awards like:toon1

NY Times – Top 10 iPad Apps of 2011 ★★★ ★★★

Parents’ Choice – 2011 Silver Honor Award ★★★ ★★★

Children’s Technology Review – 2011 Editor’s Choice ★★★

ToonTastic is an educational application, works on both iOS, Android systems, and it is suitable for kids ages 6 years and up.

The application had a free version, and there were also several scene packs with additional characters and settings for $.99-$1.99 each. A $9.99 in-app purchase unlocks everything. After being a part of Google, the application becomes totally free.

“We’re proud to announce that our little toy company is pairing up with a great big team of tinkerers to empower GAJILLIONS of playful storytellers around the world. Launchpad Toys is joining Google to create even more amazing creativity tools for kids. Today, we’ve made our digital toys and tools free to creative kids everywhere. Tomorrow… well, we can’t wait to share :)”

In Toontastic players create original animated cartoons by choosing the characters and settings (either from templates or by drawing their own from scratch), posing and moving the characters around by dragging them around the screen, recording dialogue using the iPad’s built-in microphone, and selecting an appropriate musical background. Kids can share their videos and watch other kids’ creations through the Toontastic online community.

In October,2013, ToonTastic and Minecraftedu team up and created a “How Toons?”. a contest for kids to show what they are learning by playing Minecraft. Each kid share his How Toons with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter – each like, share, comment and tweet counts as a vote for the cartoon! At the end of the contest, the cartoon with the most votes will win a “How Toons” Prize Package from Launchpad Toys and MinecraftEdu.

I see this initiative as a “Leader initiative” from both companies, they wanted to show how kids can learn from playing the astoundingly popular sandbox indie game

Product features:

  • Hundreds of Characters and Backgrounds: 50 play sets chock full of pirates, princesses, and far away galaxies.
  • Special FX: Create your own Hollywood blockbusters complete with explosions, tornadoes, rainstorms… and falling anvils
  • Video Export: Save videos to the Camera Roll to post online or edit in iMovie
  • Toy Camera: Take and import photo backgrounds to turn your playroom into a movie studio and add your own photo faces to characters
  • ProtoToys: Draw your own animated characters complete with rocket boosters, helicopter blades, flying capes, and more animated effects.
  • Share: don’t let your great videos confined in your device, you can easily share it with other great kids on ToonTube where many big kids like to share their videos. Moreover, you can be the winner of the best video contest! (unfortunately, this feature has been disabled, and ToonTube have disappeared. many parents writing disappointed reviews in the App store, because they consider it as a remarkable feature ).