Draw your own fish and bring them to life with the new Pictureium from Japanese toy manufacturer Takara Tomy Arts.
The Pictureium uses a smartphone app to project your hand drawn underwater creatures to life in a virtual aquarium. You can even feed them snacks. Or why not take a selfie and swim around the tank yourself?
The package comes with the aquarium and lid, plus the special cards you need to draw on (you can download additional cards from the Takara Tomy Arts’ home page if you run out. You'll have to supply your own smartphone though.
Just create your fishy design (or mermaids, sea monsters — whatever you like), place your smartphone on top of the tank, wave your drawing over the camera's phone and your fish will be projected into the tank, where it can be seen swimming around.
You can interact with the fish to some degree by drawing food for them to eat and they will even follow your finger around.
The Pictureium costs 1,922 yen (around a tenner) and will no doubt provide hours of fun should it appear on the UK market.
The video below explains more — it's all in Japanese, but is fairly simple to follow.
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Don't forget that PFK is available in digital format for the iPad/iPhone and there's also an Android version on the Google Play news stand.