Mr Mayo guided me to Xtranormal via this tweet this morning:
Xtranormal (beta) seems like a pretty neat idea. You supply the text and choose the characters, soundtrack, set design from the site’s templates. Cool way to quickly give dialogue some life. Pros are that it was really quick to use and easy to register. Cons are the digital sounding voices and that I couldn’t get my character to move more than the funky in-place dancing. A major con is the advertisement at the bottom that states publishing movies is free for a limited time only.
This is really a major con because I had initially thought this would be a great way for my students to give life to their writing. A great way to make writing a monologue or a persuasive essay fun. But that threat of bits of the site becoming un-free soon, well, doesn’t make me want to start using it with my students because who knows when all of a sudden we’ll have to stop, or certain elements will no longer be available to us.
Don’t think I’d pay for this when it comes time to do so. But until then, it is fun to play.