Xtranormal.com lets you make your own animated cartoons quickly and easily
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Perhaps you've always dreamed of making your own animated cartoons, but you lacked the drive (or talent) to do so. Well, thanks to the good people at Xtranormal.com, you can now make a professional-quality cartoon in minutes.
On Xtranormal, you can create scenes using a variety of 3D CGI characters in several possible cartoon worlds, write a script for them, select their voices and various gestures from a pull-down menu, and even choose your own camera angles. (You also have the option to put your camera on auto-pilot.) From there you can save your work to display on Xtranormal itself, or upload it directly to Youtube. It's literally possible to create an Adult Swim-quality animation in less time than it would take to watch an episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor. All this, and it's free! (Well, at least it's free while it's in beta mode. When the site officially launches, expect to pay a small monthly fee for certain features.)
Now, we don't want to over-sell the site. As we said, it's in beta mode, and currently suffers from some slow save times and other glitches. While there are plenty of characters to choose from, you will quickly begin to wish for customizable designs... And characters that can walk, instead of always having their feet stuck in place. The digital voices are sometimes hard to understand. And the only way to download your movies to your computer is to first upload them to Youtube and then download them to your hard drive using one of the Youtube downloader programs you can find online, a needlessly complicated process.
But if you're a frustrated Seth McFarlane, this is definitely the program for you. It's hard to describe the fun of writing a script and then watching 3D cartoon characters act it out mere moments later. We'll be very interested to see what's being done with Xtranormal in a year or two, when the bugs are worked out.
On Xtranormal, you can create scenes using a variety of 3D CGI characters in several possible cartoon worlds, write a script for them, select their voices and various gestures from a pull-down menu, and even choose your own camera angles. (You also have the option to put your camera on auto-pilot.) From there you can save your work to display on Xtranormal itself, or upload it directly to Youtube. It's literally possible to create an Adult Swim-quality animation in less time than it would take to watch an episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor. All this, and it's free! (Well, at least it's free while it's in beta mode. When the site officially launches, expect to pay a small monthly fee for certain features.)
Now, we don't want to over-sell the site. As we said, it's in beta mode, and currently suffers from some slow save times and other glitches. While there are plenty of characters to choose from, you will quickly begin to wish for customizable designs... And characters that can walk, instead of always having their feet stuck in place. The digital voices are sometimes hard to understand. And the only way to download your movies to your computer is to first upload them to Youtube and then download them to your hard drive using one of the Youtube downloader programs you can find online, a needlessly complicated process.
But if you're a frustrated Seth McFarlane, this is definitely the program for you. It's hard to describe the fun of writing a script and then watching 3D cartoon characters act it out mere moments later. We'll be very interested to see what's being done with Xtranormal in a year or two, when the bugs are worked out.
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