This week I found a really cute program called Xtranormal, which is basically a ‘do it yourself’ animation program. You have to create a free account, then you can create a movie using their templates and characters. If you want to come up with something more exotic, you have to pay. However, the characters and movie templates that they have for free are really nice and quite fun to use. I thought this program would be really fun to share with my graphic design students in the future. The dialog or script is all made up by you, the user. The characters then say the lines you have created for them to speak. This can be really funny. I did a somewhat plain script, just a few lines for each character to speak about Full Sail University! I chose the template where two teddy-bear types of characters were speaking. I thought it would be fun to try this out. I certainly can see that there would be many uses for this. I saw a template that was for characters out of history. It would be fun for students to create a Benjamin Franklin character or something similar, and have the character talk about when they lived and what was going on in history at that time. Ben Franklin’s character could talk about the many inventions he came up with as well. This would also be fun for students to use to create a little animated movie about some design problem they might be having, or use to describe a design procedure or program feature. The uses that one could come up with for using Xtranormal are just boundless. I know that I will use this Web 2.0 application, and definitely will teach it to my students as well. You should try it out just for fun!
Here is a picture of my Xtranormal movie page:
Here is a picture of my Xtranormal movie page:
Below is a quick and simple movie I created within minutes of signing up for a free account at Xtranormal.com
I did try to embed the code, but for some reason it does not appear to be compatible with blogger. Here instead is a link to my Xtranormal movie site (which is similar to a Viddler site):
Zoe's Xtranormal Movie Site
As always, Zoe, I was thoroughly entertained by your description and the adorable little movie. Maybe you can submit it to Admissions to see if they'd like some original PR. Seriously, the features are wonderful, and I totally agree that it would be wonderful for students to research a famous person, type out their script, and produce a "live" talk to share that person's life story. This is one more great tool that is free with endless possibilities. I'm so glad you found and shared it.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as i saw this the little wheels started turning in my little brain - could be the tool to get a buy in from the kids for some sort of literary debate. Think of how entertained they would be writing serious intellectual dialogue discussing, perhaps, the manifestations of chivalry in the 21st century as revealed in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and then presenting it in some too-cute-for-words environment. Think my artsy film kids would have a ball with this one. Thanks for your perceptive eyes.
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