xtranormal – “Make Movies”
I stumbled across this site today and I’m pretty impressed by what it has to offer. xtranormal allows users to create movies, well actually animations. Take a look at the screenshot below and I explain the individual pieces:
First you design the scene that you want to shoot using the buttons in the bottom left corner. You can pick from a number of different environments like hospital, school, park, etc. Add some ambient noise or a background music and you’re ready to direct your actor(s). You do so by adding their lines to the script on the left side of the screen. If you want to change the camera angle or animate the speaker, you simple drag the icons on the left into the text box with your characters line. Repeat for all actors and then wash, rinse and repeat.
Once you are happy with your scenes and the script, you use the “Action!” button in the bottom right corner to send your instructions to xtranormal’s servers. After a short while a preview of your movie appears in the video display on the right. The actor’s lines are converted using a text-to-speech engine.
I looked at some of the sample movies on their site and it is impressive how versatile this approach is. Wonder who’s going to buy this company …
