Skip to main content

Xtranormal - Easy Animation for Writers.

Xtranormal is an animation site that claims if you can type, you can make movies. It's a bold claim but it certainly delivers with its online 'text to movie' animation studio.

I would liken the experience to writing a twitter conversation where the status update box is shaped like a speech balloon. You simply select which character is speaking, write their dialog in the balloon, then add the next speech balloon to the list for the next (or even the same character) to say something.

In fact if you keep log files of your various online conversations you could use Xtranormal to turn them into movies.

Once you've entered all your dialog, click the preview button and you can see your animation come to life using fairly detailed 3D characters and sets. All the camera angles will be automatically selected and I have to say the automated camera works pretty well. The shots it chooses do make your animation look like a professional movie. It's not always perfect but it's great for people who don't know the first thing about how to film a scene.

The selection of Text to Speech voices are pretty good. Many are fairly robotic but they're still amongst some of the most natural I've come across in this type of application.

You could leave it there but the genius behind the text to movie studio is that you can add in pre-animated movements, facial expressions, gestures, sound effects and more all by placing little icons at the appropriate points in your script. It really is very easy and relatively quick (well quick in terms of how fast you can produce a finished, two minute animation).

As someone with no experience of the site I had my first animation finished in a couple of hours. I think it only took me that long because I was making up the script as I went. I probably could've worked much quicker if I had a script ready to go. The result was episode one (see the embed movie below) of a humorous series I've started called Office Space.

E1: Office Space: Pink is for Men by TET


In this first episode I switched off the auto camera and selected all the angles myself from a selection of 10 predetermined camera positions.

Episode 2 (embeded below) is a little longer. This time I went completely with the auto camera. I think it misses in one or two places that would've worked better with a medium shot but on the whole it's not too bad.

E2: Office Space: Coffee in the Machine by TET


Xtranormal has a good selection of themes and premade characters for each. Office Space is made with the Suitz theme. Other themes include; sports, celebrities, historical figures and more. Some themes use more realistic characters and sets whilst others use characters that look a little like Lego figures.

Most themes come with two free characters and one free background giving you enough to spend hours on the site to really try things out. Once you've decided the site is for you you can buy extra content by purchasing Xtranormal Points.

One of the things I like about Xtranormal is that your finished video is a proper high resolution video which you can easily upload to Youtube by linking your Youtube account to your Xtranormal account.

At the time of writing one thing you can't do with the Text to Movie studio is have your characters walk around the scene. You can't even place them in the scene you have to go with the pre-determinded placement. Hence in my two episodes Steve and Vicki are standing in the same location for the entire scene. However, there is a downloadable version of Text to Movie called 'Slate' which I understand does allow you to move characters around and adds more functionality as well.

I did download Slate but unfortunately my computer wasn't quite up to spec to run it (lacking a 3D graphic card). Personally though I'd prefer to see the online application developed further. It has so much potential for story telling without requiring too high a spec machine to make it work.

Xtranormal's approach to movie editing is unique (at least I haven't come across anything similar). Where most movie editing applications use story boards and time lines, Xtranormals text to movie approach allows writers to add movement, expressions and more much like most people add smiley emotions to text in chats and emails. It's very easy.

Whilst currently you can't create custom characters or add your own sets there's plenty to adapt to your own ideas and scripts. There's still a way to go before the site becomes a serious movie making platform but I expect it can only get better.

Well worth trying out and, with its Youtube and Facebook integration, a great tool for having a lot of fun with all those logged online conversations - imagine turning a facebook comment discussion into an animated movie...

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Eric W. Schwartz: Cartoonist, Animator and Amiga Die Hard

July 1992 Edition, CU Amiga Featuring Amy the Squirrel. American Cartoonist, Eric W. Schwartz , (whose unofficial Amiga Icon, Amy the Squirrel, is pictured on the July 92 edition of CU Amiga cover on the right) is my only real animation hero. Sure there are the big names like Disney , Chuck Jones , Tex Avery and even Preston Blair whose influences can all be seen in my own cartoons but Eric did what none of the others could. He showed that really great 2D computer animation was within my reach with little more than an Amiga Computer , a copy of Deluxe Paint and Moviesetter . This was at a time when computer based animation was in its infancy (outside of computer game animation) and Flash was something that lights did. There were many great Amiga artists but Eric was really the only one consistently making very funny, traditional style animations. His humor and drawing style is heavily influenced by classic Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons but he managed to build on this,

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w

Eleven Mostly Free Comic Book/Strip Resources For Your Next Motion Comic

Created with Lywi.com Comic Maker. One really exciting use for Cartoon Animator and other animation software is to assist in the production of creating motion comics. If you're not familiar with motion comics just think of them as a kind of video comic book that typically features (but not always) all of the dialogue in each panel read by voice actors along with limited animation to make the still images more dynamic and visually interesting. Below is a demonstration motion comic I made many years ago when I reviewed Smith Micro's Motion Artist software (which has since been discontinued but, if you can find a copy, its entire purpose was to create motion comics and other motion graphics). Follow the link to the review if you want to see how this was made. The great thing about motion comics is that they're much easier to animate than an animated cartoon short. Often much of the animation will be moving a a static image of a character, panning the camera across a scene cre