An art
computer program published by
Microsoft in 1994. It is the companion program to
Creative Writer and is very similar to it, except for its focus and a few of the features.
Like Creative Writer, Fine Artist is set in the fictional city of Imaginopolis. McZee, Max, Maggie and Spike are also present once again. Maggie, who was barely present in Creative Writer, assumes Max's role as guide and helper in this program.
The setup and sign in screens are the same as those in Creative Writer. If a user has already installed and created profiles for one program, they will automatically be exported to the other. Once the user has selected their profile, they are taken to the Fine Artist building.
The building is aptly named the Museum. When asked for the backstory, McZee explains that the Museum stores all of his artistic works which are all versions of works by artists such as da Vinci, Rembrandt and Picasso. (He also claims to have been the inspiration for many of these artists' works).
The Museum has four floors: the Lobby, the Painting Studio, the Project Workshop and the Drawing Tricks floor.
The Lobby/Gallery
The Lobby allows the user to get to any of the other floors in the building. The gallery is also accessible through the lobby. Users can access the most recently opened documents in the gallery.
The Painting Studio
On this floor, the user can create 'paintings' using paintbrushes, stamps, spray paint, watercolours, and chalk. There are also many 'paint bucket' features, including pattern fills, pop art fills, bubble fills, and the surprise fill which puts a random pattern on the image when used.
The Painting Studio also includes the same clip art available in Creative Writer). The most notable addition to the selection is a group of animated pictures that can be 'played' by clicking on them.
Users can also add sounds, shape art and word bubbles to their art, can center a vanishing point and create guidelines. They can also create their own clip art.
The Project Workshop
In the Project Workshop, users can create comic strips, stickers and buttons, and slide shows. Once again, the creative geniuses at Microsoft came up with brilliant animal puns when naming these activities ('Cowmic strip', 'boa consticker' and 'pigture show'. Judge for yourself).
Each of these projects is preformatted. In order to make comic strips with more than four panels, however, one has to make more than one comic strip.
The 3D Tricks Floor
On this floor, Maggie teaches the user about positive and negative space and how to use the program's guidelines to create 3D images. This floor is beneficial for the first few uses but since there are only two tutorials and it's the same images each time, it can get kind of boring.
In the top right-hand corner of the 3D tricks floor is a picture frame. The user can change the painting inside by clicking on it. They're spoofs of famous paintings, all featuring McZee. It may be sacrelige but it's worth checking out because of the variety of paintings involved.
Miscellaneous Stuff
Many of the core features are the same in both programs, such as the Joke Book and Magic Wand.
Much like Creative Writer, this program is geared towards younger kids. It's a lot easier for older users to have fun with this one than it is with Creative Writer, however. It's no Photoshop but it's more fun than Paint.