Art Academy: First Semester (do I smell a sequel already?) is a complete art training course in the form of a DSiWare app. Just download Art Academy from the DSi Shop, and you’ll be a junior Rembrandt in no time. The program teaches you the basics of pencils, paints, blending colors, basic light and shadow techniques and more. Plus, you can either start with a blank canvas or embellish photos from your DSi’s camera album. Here’s a video showing off what you can expect in the Academy:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While it’s not as sophisticated as natural media PC apps like ArtRage (one of my personal favorites), Art Academy looks like a nifty way to express your creativity on the DSi.

Designed by Adafruit (in collaboration with Jay Silver), Drawdio is an analog synthesizer circuit that straps to any soft-leaded pencil, and lets you crank out electronic sounds while you sketch. The kit takes advantage of the conductive properties of the graphite in the pencil lead, and produces a veritable cacophony of sounds as you put pencil to paper.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So maybe you can’t call those otherworldly bleeps, beeps and squeaks “music”, but with enough practice you might be able to carry a basic tune… or you could give one of these a try the next time you have to fill in all those perfect little circles on your SAT or GMAT exam. I’m sure the test administrator would love that.

Adafruit sells the Drawdio kit for $19.50 (USD), including the circuit board, all necessary hardware and a 2B pencil. You’ll need basic soldering skills to put Drawdio together, so don’t expect it to work without some experience building electronic kits.

The most practical of the bunch is the Information Central pad, which helps you track things to do, people to call/e-mail, and other miscellaneous to-dos.

A little more whimsical option is the Daily Mood Tracker mouse pad, which keeps your mood swings in check from day-to-day. Now you can finally figure out if you really are an A-hole on Mondays and everyone’s best bud on Fridays. I get bad memories just thinking about having to fill in all those standardized test-like bubbles – and I forgot my No. 2 pencil, so I can’t erase!

Last, but not least is the Random Dawdle, which gives you a place to scribble down miscellaneous ideas, websites, drawings and other random stuff. I’m not sure what the point of the dotted-outline letters are, but I figure that just contributes to the randomness.

All pads ship with 60 tear-off sheets, giving you about 2 months of everyday use before you need to invest in a new mouse pad. You can grab all three designs over at Perpetual Kid for $9.99 a pad.

Back in 1983, designer Rob Marquardt (aka ‘someToast’) painstakingly drafted not only the exterior of the stick to show off his mad isometric drawing skills, he went through the trouble of diagramming out all of the gory internals of the classic digital gaming controller.

While it might not be a 100% accurate rendition of the Atari controller, you have to admire his creativity and persistence. His teacher may have graded his work anywhere from A- to B, but I say A++++ all the way!

(P.S. While you’re staring at Rob’s Flickr portfolio, be sure to check out this awesome blueprint iPhone menu skin he designed.)

Game enthusiast Philipp Lenssen took partial screenshots from famous arcade games and ran them through VectorMagic, a nifty online bitmap-to-vector conversion tool, then enlarged them to exaggerate the line-art effect.

I’m so used to seeing all these gaming icons in their traditional pixel block form, it was really cool to see them reinterpreted in a way I never imagined.

The only thing cooler would be a MAME video filter that would actually let you play the games in their vector form.

You can check Philipp’s entire collection of vectorized video game art over on Google Blogoscoped.

[via DRAWN!] (thanks for the tip, Roadside Scholar!)

Created by robotic researcher Sylvain Calinon, the robot recognizes when there’s a face in its field of view, then snaps a digital photo and extracts the major characteristics of their visage. Once that’s done, the robot turns itself into an X/Y plotter, picking up an old-fashioned quill pen and gradually filling in the details of a portrait.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I think it would be really cool to set up a bunch of these in a row, creating different styles of art using ink, pastel, oils and acrylics. Sylvain, are you listening?

[via BotJunkie]

Other recent drawings from the master of metallic filings include such pop icons as Hall and Oates, Master Chief, and the Don’t Tase Me ‘Bro dude. He’s even mocked up the interface to Adobe Photoshop using his etching skills.

Not a straight line among the bunch. I stand in awe.

The Wacom Bamboo will retail for under $150 when it’s released later this Spring, and features a wide variety of features for both creative and functional uses. The small (appx. 4″ x 6″) drawing surface fits nicely on any desktop, and comes with a nicely designed stand for its wireless stylus.

The tablet is sensitive to 512 levels of pressure, making it ideal for illustration and painting applications. It also features four “express” hot keys and a nifty zoom/scroll ring, similar to an iPod’s scroll wheel which can all be used to improve navigation through your programs. It also provides handwriting recognition capabilities and gesture-based input for use in some applications. The tablet features USB connectivity and works with both PCs and Macs.

[via Akihabaranews]