OK, I’m trying not to squeeze my Hyperbole Hat on TOO tight, but after a few hours playing with Xtranormal.com, I’m pretty frakkin’ excited.
What is Xtranormal.com? Well, it’s a service, both free and paid, that allows you to create 3d movies in just a few clicks, with animated “actors” that you write dialogue for. You can even place movements and pauses, or change the camera… all without having to know how to write a script of how to frame a shot.
Cool, right? I think it’s more than that. I think it’s the beginning of a revolution in content creation that will put incredibly powerful tools in the hands of ANYONE – including children (two of my three sons have already made short movies). This is just a first generation thing, and already the results are pretty good (especially to do short form comedy videos). Imagine what the next generation of functionality will bring… and the version after that. Now, granted, Sturgeon’s law will still apply (“90% of everything is crap”), but just think of how creative people could be with such a service – without having to cover the the costs of sets or actors or deal with the learning curve of complicated tools. People can just TELL THEIR STORIES… simply, efficiently, and effectively.
And there are some interesting possibilities beyond even that – Imagine professional actors “licensing” their image and voice for movies made using such a service – think about open-source sets and actors that people can add, so they could do new epsiodes of Galactica, or The Honeymooners… quickly, and easily. Those shows are off the air, and belong to us now – this tool can let us continue to produce videos and tell stories in those universes.
It isn’t going to replace Hollywood – but if I were the power brokers out there, I would be paying close attention to stuff like this.
VERY close attention.