123D Creature lets you virtually build your own monsters, even adding them to your own photos. Not good enough? You can upload your monster file to a service that will turn it into a real figurine.
The iPad has become astoundingly amazing, picking up where the iPhone started and extending the whole iOS ecosystem in ways that are often surprising and delightful. Case in point: 123D Creature, an iPad app by Autodesk that lets you build, hone, and paint your own monstrous creation. In the first step, you can add bones and create limbs in a reasonably intuitive way, as well as position and shape your creature. Next, you virtually bake it to make it ready for sculpting, metaphorically as if you’re cutting away clay, smoothing it, or adding a bit here and there. Then there’s the paint process, which lets you paint your 3D masterpiece with standard colors or from a pallet of hair and features.
There’s more, though, lots more. You can even deposit the image of your creature onto a photo, which means if you have a landscape photo, you can drop your creature right onto it. Plus, you can add lighting effects. For someone who’s not very creative, it’s a powerful app. For someone with patience, time, and an eye for monsters, wow.
Then, if you want to, you can use a built-in in-app purchase to order up a 3D-printed version of your monster in figurine form. For more, check out my full review, “123D Creature Is an Awesome Exercise in Facing Your Monsters.”
