Recently Lego launched Vidy, a music video maker for kids on a safe and secure platform. The app offers kids a creative outlet while still needing them to apply some hands-on skills, in order to ready their stage for their performance.
The target market for Lego’s vidyo product is 7 – 10 year olds and partnered with Universal Music, so you’ll have some really popular music to make videos to. It’s important to note that this isn’t free to access setup, you’ll need some specifics to get going. The bandmates are $5.99 while the beatboxes are $25.99 per box, although if you shop around you’ll find them cheaper already.
At the time of release, there’s a fairly extensive list of beatboxes to buy:
- ‘Candy Pop’ in the Candy Mermaid BeatBox (Pop)
- ’Pirate Punk’ in the Punk Pirate Beatbox (Punk)
- ‘Alien DJ’ in the Extra Terrestrial Dance Music BeatBox (ETDM)
- ‘Party Llama’ in the Party Llama BeatBox (Tropicon)
- ‘Unicorn DJ’ in the Unicorn DJ BeatBox (K-pawp)
- ‘Robot Break-dancer’ in the HipHop Robot BeatBox (HipHop)
With the bandmates collection including Red Panda Dancer; Cotton Candy Cheerleader; Shark Singer; Bunny Dancer; Discowboy Singer; Genie Dancer; Samurapper; DJ Cheetah; Ice Cream Saxophonist; Alien Keytarist; Banshee Singer and Werewolf Drummer.
With each bandmate or beatbox, you’re building your own band (or several of them) to make performances with. What really impressed me was how simple the platform is and I can see how safe it is: There are no real communication options between users, just post videos and appreciate others with “likes”. The beatboxes come with a pile of “beat bits” which gives your bandmates special moves, costumes, short music clips, funny moves or even video filters.
Making Videos – it’s a breeze
My 8 year old daughter figured out the app, without any instructions it really is that easy. There are visual guides on-screen to help you scan in your characters in order to build your band. Without them, the performance is kind of dull, but when you use the beat bits they provide you with the moves, sound and visuals for each video you make, giving you – uhhh, your kids… great customisation on what outcome you’ll get from the performance. Content is moderated so there isn’t any risk of your kids being exposed to inappropriate materials either.
This is where it gets amazing.
Once you’ve given the app a visual reference on the area you want to film in, it sets the position of your characters. This means that you or your kids become the camera person, and you can move throughout the performance area to heighten the AR experience. If desired you can also be in the video with your characters. This is a really well put together, interactive and fun video maker for kids and parents to enjoy together.
Once you’ve finished making your video, it’s automatically saved to your app. If you want to, you can upload it to the Vidyo app for others to share your creations. I’ve been having a lot of fun making videos with my kids, so much so that I’ve been buying beatboxes and bandmates regularly. If your kids are in the target market, it’s a reasonable bet that you and they will have a lot of fun too.
