Review by Sarah Cooper (Family Fun Guide)

A short while ago I was in total awe of people who could animate; but then I got my hands on a product called ‘HUE Animation Studio’ and suddenly the mysterious world of animation was opened up to me. What I would have thought almost impossible a short while ago was now something that could be created with ease.

I first heard of HUE Animation Studio when a friend of mine produced a video for a competition the website Quidco were running; the video was amazing and not surprisingly she won! So I was ever so intrigued when she told me her secret to the amazing video was the HUE Animation studio.
HUE Animation Studio has brought with it a whole new hobby to our household; something that I previously would have thought to be impossible for a family activity; and the lovely thing about it is that it is educational and fun! HUE Animation Studio is a great way to promote learning and encourage children to work together and is used by schools as a teaching tool. So whilst I watch my 3 year old and 9 year old create an animation together I can step back and enjoy that warm glowing feeling when you know your children are doing something worthwhile.

I suppose I better talk you through set-up; although in fact the process is super-duper easy. You just put the CD-Rom in your disc drive, click on the button which says ‘install’ and you are nearly done. It’s just a case of letting the software download and plugging in the very funky looking USB camera. Our camera was a very fetching shade of green and reminded me of some sort of alien; so immediately the children took a liking to it! The camera is bendable too so that you can have it looking in all sorts of awkward directions; very versatile!

We created our first few animations using Lego figures and a Lego house, but the options are endless. You can use modelling clay, drawings, felt shapes, toys; the only limit to what you can create is your imagination. The look on my three year olds face when he saw his Lego characters walk along in the little movie we made was priceless. He’s got a thing about not wanting to brush his teeth at the moment, so I am thinking of the possibility of making a movie about a talking toothbrush. Anything is possible with HUE Animation Studio!

If you are wondering how you make these wonderful movies, you just get your character and pose and move them along; photographing each step along the way and the software seamlessly puts all these photos together to make it look like a movie! Amazing! And if that wasn’t good enough there is no messing around trying to figure out how to upload to YouTube as the buttons within the software are all very self-explanatory, so it is really easy to upload to your favourite video site to share your creations with friends and family.

Everything is easy to get the hang of with HUE Animation studio from adding lovely music, to removing certain sections of your movie, everything is well organised visually so that you don’t have to spend hours searching how to do a specific task. Adults and children alike will have no problems at all using HUE.

It is absolutely wonderful to see the creativity that my 9 year old is constantly demonstrating using HUE Animation Studio, we have had earthquake movies and Minecraft movies, we have even sent off for the Morph plasticine kit to make for future movies.

I just can’t commend HUE Animation Studio highly enough! Everything you could want and more…