Superhero Comic Book Maker HD - by Duck Duck Moose Review

Superhero Comic Book Maker HD - by Duck Duck Moose is a cute and fun creative art app containing a plethora of elements users can choose from to ultimately create one’s own comic book. Versions are available for both iPad and iPhone.

Fans of Duck Duck Moose may notice similarities between this app and their other application, Princess Fairy Tale Maker, which has similar elements and functionality. I hesitate to consider the princess app for girls and this superheroes app for boys, but I appreciate this new app as an answer to those children who have no interest in princess-themed activities, although there is no reason why princess kids could not also enjoy the Superheroes Comic Book Maker as well.

There are two main sections of this app as well as an area one can save previous work to, allowing a player to view past scenes as well as to add more to them at any time in the future.

Comic Maker allows one to choose from 27 backgrounds, a blank page and a chance to access photos from one’s device to work on. I really enjoy these backdrops, each bold and colorful, as there are wonderful choices to stimulate creative thinking and superhero or monster themes, such as the POV from a spaceship, industrial setting with robots and a conveyer belt, as well as other more natural scenes including a farm, saloon, or desert, which allow these characters to visit Earth. It is worth noting that although the theme here includes monsters, every image included within is utterly family-friendly, as is the included classical music based on classic nursery rhymes that Duck Duck Moose is known for.

After a landscape selection is made, one will notice the great abundance of sticker choices one can choose from to drag and drop onto the backdrop from the bottom of the screen.

A touch will trigger charming sound effects as well as give players the option with the zoom or pinch of fingers to change the size of chosen stickers. It is worth noting that users may want to hold their finger down longer than typical for a tap as these character stickers also sometimes speak full sentences, which can be cut short by a rapid tap of a finger.

A vast amount of colors can be chosen to draw with, and I enjoy the sharp line of a pencil or a less opaque, softer line of the crayon, but it would also be nice to include a larger tool such as a paintbrush as well. I have also noticed that one cannot draw directly on top of these stickers, but only behind.

In the future, it would be nice to also have a chance to add one’s own drawing details directly onto these sticker characters to personalize them even further.

At any time, feel free to record your own animated scene including voices for the stickers who come to life as one moves them around the page, tapping their mouths to make them lip sync with provided narration as well as having them turn left or right depending on the direction one leads them, allowing them to turn to each other to converse, embrace, or chase one another. Enlarging and shrinking these stickers is also made easy even for little hands to master.

I really enjoy the sheer amount of sticker choices, including creative monster or superhero characters as well as masks, hats, weapons, shields and comic book-styled sound effects, letters and also numbers, making these sticker choices seem endless indeed.

Children will equally enjoy the 28 coloring pages, which also include a very nice selection of monsters and super heroes both together and separately.

After choosing a background, fill in the areas that make up the image with a tap - paintbrush style, which is my personal favorite style of coloring on the iPad and iPhone. Again, a nice amount of colors are included, here each given a silly face as well - a quirky detail I enjoy, as I do the rainbow color choice which adds rainbow stripes instead of a solid color.

A plethora of brightly colored pattern choices can also be used, from basic stripes, polka dots and clouds to skulls and vehicle choices.

Do also note that the same sticker choices from Comic Maker are also available here as well, also sharing an eraser and small and large erasers - a nice touch, but I would also appreciate the function of an Undo button as well as well as a slightly different feature to the Erase button.

Here too, children can record their own voices and move stickers around, but I would love to incorporate the fun sound effects when selecting the stickers into the animated scene as well. This is presumably not possible because users would want to add their own voices, but I would like the option to keep these novel audio elements intact to use as a player chooses.

It would also be wonderful to add stickers during the recording, or draw on the screen while creating these animated moments. It is nice that where one drags a finger does not trigger a character and includes a glowing highlight, allowing one to mark the screen during the animation for effect as well.

When complete, these pages will become panels in a comic book that one gets to organize into one's own personal storyboards as well as to save images to a device.

Tapping any of these panels will enlarge to the full page where one can keep making changes and re-saving, but in viewing this comic book as a whole, the panels are rather small. I would love to be able to pinch and zoom to make these panels easier to see while looking at them as a whole, in keeping with the style of comic books.

Even with the notes given, children could spend countless hours being creative within Superhero Comic Book Maker. With their images, combined with their voices, they will make charming keepsakes that adults will enjoy as much as their children will.