Sunday, November 18, 2007

SegPlayPC - Paint by Numbers for the Digital Age

I am one of the people who enjoy activities where they can see how things gradually take shape out of nothing. Even my profession is related to that :) I also enjoy jigsaw puzzles a lot and I've always been intrigued by paint-by-numbers games. I even tried to take on cross-stitching for a while but I wasn't very good at it (which doesn't stop me from trying my hand at it every few years). All this being said you can probably imagine how happy I was on discovering a "Paint by Numbers for the Digital Age" game called SegPlayPC. It's a paint by numbers computer game!


I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this game, I've been playing it for a few days now and cannot seem to get enough: each time I finish a pattern I keep wondering how would this or that look like and start working on a new one :) I really enjoy using this game for its relaxing qualities. It lets your mind wander and before you know it you find yourself the next Leonardo with your own Mona Lisa (see mine below).

The game has three levels of difficulty: easy (all numbers where they should be), hint (only selected number is shown) and difficult (no numbers, you can be as creative as you like :) ). Also, you can always print your patterns and unleash your inner painter (however it is a lot easier on the computer as the colors are always the right ones - not an easy feat in real life :) ).

There are a lot of Pattern Sets for SegPlayPC that you can try your hand on, some of them being paintings of great masters and some of them simply beautiful pictures (if you are a dog person you just have to check out the dog set, it's lovely).

Speaking of patterns, if you visit the site of the company behind SegPlayPC (Segmation - The Art of Pieceful Imaging) you can also find the Segmation™ plug-in for Adobe Photoshop™ - a plugin for Photoshop enabling you to create such patterns from your own pictures.

The thing I liked most in this game: the fact that their patterns were a very good imitation of the originals, the characters managing to keep their full expressiveness of features (I couldn't believe how well Mona Lisa's smile has turned out :) ).

The thing I liked least: there is no save button to allow you to save your work in progress! I looked at the help file thinking I must have missed it and they said that your work is automatically saved when you close the program. Which it is. However I had the misfortune of my computer crashing when I was almost done with the Mona Lisa and I lost almost two thirds of it :( (and we're talking about a 63 colors pattern)

Feature I'd like implemented most (besides the save button that is): I would totally love to have a sort of gallery with the artworks completed over time. As it is I keep screenshots of them as they are too beautiful to let go but an in-game album to brag about would be awesome :)

As a bonus here are my favorite patterns I completed:





Wanna try yourself? Click here to visit the SegPlayPC site.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

great link! :)

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