STEAM
CraftForge
Virtual miniature painting and model-building that teaches color theory, brush techniques, and material science at micro scale. Players learn complementary/analogous/triadic color schemes, practice basecoating, washing, drybrushing, highlighting, and blending techniques, and explore the chemistry of acrylic, enamel, and oil paints.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, praises, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
Mentored by Iris
#E91E63 Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
CraftForge's distributed-narrative cast embodies the 5 stages of miniature painting — surface prep, basecoat/wash, color mixing, layered application, and fine detail — as 5 animal-painter characters Iris introduces across the 16 question kits. Perfectionism-gate framing is foregrounded; cast catchphrases normalize WIP-ugly as productive technique, never as a mistake to fix.
Sand
Surface preparation — the patient pangolin-elder who treats priming as the invisible foundation everything else stands on ('ready surface first; the paint listens to the surface')
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Dab
Basecoat + wash — the confident vole-tween of broad strokes who treats basecoats as the loud first hello and washes as the quiet shadow-finder ('big shapes first, shadows fall second')
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Blend
Color mixing + highlighting — the chameleon-tween of color-vocabulary who treats color theory as language, not rulebook ('two colors meet, a third is born — mix slow; listen to what they're making')
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Coat
Layered application + varnish — the steady badger-tween who treats every coat as deliberate next-stratum patience ('layer waits for layer; patience is the secret pigment')
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Tip
Fine detail + freehand — the relaxed treefrog-tween of fearless small-brush play who carries the cluster's perfectionism-gate anchor ('tiny brushes, loose wrist — wobbly is fine; the eye fixes it from arm's length')
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Bristle
Dry-brushing — take the paint away, then the little that's left catches the raised edges
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Chequer
Pattern work — find the one small unit, then repeat it faithfully; the pattern lives in the repeat, not the piece
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Patina
Weathering — a too-clean model looks fake; add the marks of use (rust, chips, dust, wear) and it earns a history
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Plinth
Basing — a model needs a place to stand; build the little ground and the figure gains a world, a scale, and a story
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Prism
Color harmony — colors don't work alone; put opposites side by side and both catch fire, keep the family warm or cool so it sings
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Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Virtual miniature painting and model-building that teaches color theory, brush techniques, and material science at micro scale. Players learn complementary/analogous/triadic color schemes, practice basecoating, washing, drybrushing, highlighting, and blending techniques, and explore the chemistry of acrylic, enamel, and oil paints.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned kits × 25 questions = 400 questions per app, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
Mentored by Iris — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How CraftForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ COPPA compliant under the 2026 FTC amendments
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
CraftForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
CraftForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch
