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Posts with tag animation

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Video, Beta

Anyone can make animated digital clips with Xtranormal

I can't remember how many times I've had a seemingly great idea for a skit with one of my coworkers. Sadly, most of us don't have the time or resources to produce our own animated shorts.

A beta web app by Xtranormal aims to level the playing field by making movie creation drag-and-drop simple. If you can write dialog that makes sense and click a mouse, you're well on your way to creating a digital masterpiece.

Choose a character, type in a block of text, and drag in facial expressions, actions, and sounds. The speech is surprisingly fluid, all things considered - no MS Sam here!

You're currently limited to one or two actors, but that's plenty for putting together a quick, fun clip. You can choose either Lego-style (my preference) or more life-like actors to play out your script.

When you're done piecing together elements, just click the action button and Xtranormal will render your clip. If you've registered for an account you can save your work for later. Finished clips can, of course, be shared for anyone to view.

Quite honestly, I don't have the time or skills to throw together 3d animations from scratch. Even if I did, I'm not certain the half-baked ideas I come up with would merit expending any serious effort.

Xtranormal is a great way to finally see your cinematic ideas in come to life with minimal fuss.

Filed under: Fun, News, Microsoft

Spectra Visual Newsreader: get your news in bright rainbow colors

Spectra
Are you bored of reading news sites that all look the same, or staring at rows and rows of headlines in your RSS reader? MSNBC has something you might want to see. The new Spectra Visual Newsreader grabs MSNBC stories, color-coded by category, and sends them flying around your screen like index cards in a wind tunnel. Maybe you don't want to get your news this way all the time, but it's fun to play with.

Spectra has three modes: you can put it on automatic and let the camera fly around your floating news stories, or you can leave the camera in place, watching the stories spin. The third mode is the most interesting: it lets you use a webcam to manipulate the stories with "human interaction." Unfortunately, it didn't want to cooperate with a MacBook's built-in iSight.

We don't want to completely write off Spectra, because it's a lot of fun, but it seems like MSNBC put a lot of work into a cool toy that doesn't do too much. Webcam integration in browsing is definitely an interesting trend to explore, so it would be great to see that feature working on more platforms. For now, though, we'll just get our news via RSS.

[via Josh Spear]

Filed under: Design, Games, Internet, Video, Adobe

Nominate the best for the Flash Forward Film Festival

FlashForwardFlashforward2008 is going to be in San Francisco this August. This annual conference is directed at Flash designers and developers and those who aspire to be called a designer or developer. Every year Flashforward features a Film Festival with open nominations of the best Flash content out there. In 2008 the categories have changed to the following:

  1. Application
  2. Cartoon/Story/Narrative
  3. Code
  4. Experimental/Art
  5. Game
  6. Motion Graphics
  7. Navigation/Experience
  8. Sound
  9. Typography
  10. Video

Anyone can submit links to Flash based works in all categories that are 'innovative and compelling.' Previous winners include Paper Vision 3d, the MoMA Contemporary Voice exhibition, and the amazing Tokyo Plastic. If you do submit a nomination to Flashforward2008 via the official film festival page, please let us know in the comments below with a link. The deadline for nominations is Father's Day, June 15, 2008.

Filed under: Fun, OS Updates, Video

What if your computer desktop were a real desktop

You know how your computer has digital versions of real world items, like a "recycle bin," and a mail "inbox?" This video is a clever attempt to show what your computer desktop would look like if it weren't on your computer screen.



We'd love to see someone come up with a computer desktop that uses graphics similar to those in this stop motion animation. It wouldn't be so much useful as fun, sort of like those webOS products we keep hearing about.

[via piksels]

Filed under: Design, Windows, Macintosh, Freeware

Download Bryce 5.5 for free

Those wonderful folks over at DAZ 3D are doing it again by making Bryce 5.5, a 3D landscape and animation tool, available as a free download. The latest version of their software is at 6.1, but with version 5.5 you get a free, fully functional version of the software with no time-limit or disabled features to worry about. If you've been itching to play around in the 3D world you should check this out. The software is available for both Mac and PC platforms.

[via Creative Cow]

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Utilities, Video

Microsoft announces Silverlight, a Flash competitor

microsoft silverlightMicrosoft Silverlight, in Microsoft's wording, is a next-generation, cross-platform, cross-browser web client runtime. In other words, a Flash competitor.

This is a runtime that will allow the playback of files using various forms of interactivity on both PC and Mac platforms. Silverlight will essentially deliver rich interactive applications for the web that incorporate video, animation, and interactivity. It also has the ability to run in fullscreen HD video mode while supporting 720p video, and through mobile devices.

Will this be a flash killer? Only time will tell, but Microsoft sure looks like they are pushing the whole rich and compelling web experience angle. There are more details as to Silverlights capabilities in an MSDN blog post. No word as to whether Microsoft will add support for Linux as of yet.

Check out the competition which also just launched this past weekend, Adobe Media Player, a standalone flash video player.

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Video

Get animated with ShapeShifter



Video animation is a pretty difficult undertaking. AniBoom makes creating simple video animations easier with their aniBoom ShapeShifter software. The completely online program allows you to add shapes to your workspace to create simple animations. You can create a multitude of layers within your creation and as you advance layers you can add or delete and move items to make the shapes look animated when played back.

The site has a gallery up of completed animations and some are pretty impressive given the tools you have to work with. Once you finish your masterpiece you can save it to the site and share a unique URL of your movie with your friends.

[Via WebWare]

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Time-Wasters

Create your own comic strip with ToonDoo - Today's Time-Waster


What better way to waste time then to create a cartoon. Who cares if you have no skills, ToonDoo will help you out.

ToonDoo is created by Jambav, and backed by AdventNet, the folks behind ZoHo. They have put together an easy way to create comic strips where users can choose characters, props, and backgrounds and make a cartoon in under five minutes. Seriously, you can sit for hours playing with different scenes and setups, fine tuning characters and writing scripts in speech bubbles. Cartoons can be saved, and when you feel they are good enough, you can publish them for visitors to the site to check out. It's very addicting.

Feel free to drop a comment with a link to your ToonDoo!

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters

PICTAPS - Today's Time Waster

PICTAPSToday's time waster is a bit of a weird one. PICTAPS is a site that allows you to draw a character using some rudimentary online drawing tools, then watch that character become automatically animated. It then dances to a beat that will quickly drive you crazy if you listen to it for too long.

The thing is, you will listen to it for too long. At least, I know I did. When you first navigate to the site, it launches right into the animation using characters that other users have created. If you continue to watch, you'll be treated to basically the same show over and over, but using different characters. If this sound boring, I suppose it is - but it's also somewhat compelling.

But to really have fun, you need to draw a character yourself and get into the game.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Blogging, Web services

Create photo presentations with GoodWidgets

goodwidgetsGoodWidgets allows users to upload images from a desktop, or from popular photo sites like Flickr and Photobucket, while using widgets to display photos in a unique animated presentation on a social network or webpage.

There are seven unique presentation widgets to choose from, including a slider to slides between images, a page by page flip book, and morphing between images. You can change settings like pixel size, background colors and accent colors to customize the widget. After photos are imported, configure your widget, and then drop the code on a website, blog, wordpress, or myspace. It makes for an attractive and unique photo presentation method.

GoodWidgets has a few different options for users, a free service, and a paid Pro service. The free service has a cap on the number of images that can be presented, while the paid service basically allows for more photos with the GoodWidgets branding removed.

Filed under: Fun, Adobe, Time-Wasters

Animator vs. Animation II - Today's Time Waster

Animator vs. Animation III don't know if it really qualifies as a time-waster if it's not something you can play, but nevertheless Animator vs. Animation II is right up our alley. It's a great Flash animation by Alan Becker about a Flash animator's creation that goes awry. If you enjoyed the original Animator vs. Animation, you'll enjoy its sequel, which features a lot more creativity on the part of Becker as Firefox, AIM, Photoshop, and even My Computer get in on the act. Definitely worth watching twice.

Filed under: Fun, Windows Mobile, Commercial, Time-Wasters

Animated Today screens for Windows Mobile - Today's Time Waster

Animated today 4.0Sometimes you just get sick and tired of staring at appointments and phone numbers all day, and you think to yourself, wouldn't it be great if I had an aquarium scene on the Today screen of my PDA?

Okay, maybe not, but Animated Today has come up with a solution to the problem that you never knew you had. For $14.95 you can add a system resource hog to your Pocket PC and add animated visuals to your Today screen.

Version 4.0 adds support for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, takes up less memory than previous versions, and supports landscape, square, and VGA screens.

I'm not really sure why a company that's been putting out software for at least four years is just now getting around to updating its products to Windows Mobile 5.0, but I'm also not entirely sure why you'd want to have an image of a dog romping around your PDA.

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, Utilities

Bryce 3D landscape and animation software for free

bryce 3d for freeYes you read that right. Free. DAZ Productions is giving away Bryce 5 for free. (The newest version, Bryce 5.5, still goes for around $100.)

Eagle117 tipped us off to this amazing offer from DAZ Productions, and its no hoax. Simply visit the DAZ Bryce special offers page, and visit the corresponding link to securely download the application on Download.com in either Mac or PC format. After downloading, click on the installer. When the installation prompts you to register you will be forwarded to the DAZ site, where you must set up a user profile first. When this is complete, you are given a serial number for your version of Bryce. Very simple! I was completely finished the whole process from downloading to using it in under 10 minutes! Faster if I didn't get up to get a bottle of water.

Bryce is a pretty powerful 3D landscaping and animation tool, available for both Mac and PC platforms. Traditionally the software is used for multimedia, video and web work. You can really create some amazing pieces of artwork through this application. It just might take a while to play through the many features that Bryce offers the designer.

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Freeware

Flash Player 9

Flash Player 9This one slipped under my radar: Last week Adobe released Flash Player 9 for Windows. New Flash Player releases are never really earth-shattering, but this bit in the press release caught my eye: "Flash Player 9 achieves up to 10 times faster performance through ActionScript 3.0 and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM), which features a Just In Time (JIT) compiler that translates ActionScript bytecode to native machine code for maximum execution speed." Though your average Flash animation doesn't use much ActionScript, many games and other more interactive movies do, and some developers have complained abou thte speed in ActionScript in previous versions. Also new is capabilities for the brand new Flex 2 framework and some other features that will be of interest mainly to developers, but which will benefit end-users in the long run. For Mac users, Flash Player 9 is in beta and can be downloaded at the same site (meanwhile, Linux users are still stuck with Flash Player 7).

[Via Netscape]

Filed under: Design, Fun, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source

Blender 2.41 released

blender 3d
The Blender 2.40 release was huge. Seven months in the works, it revealed a ton of new features including better character animation tools, a modifier stack, fluid effects, hair, and physics. The Blender 2.41 release was pretty hot on the heels of 2.40, but it adds a bunch of improvements to something I've been wanting for a long time: the Game Engine. The Blender game engine has endured a checkered past. When Blender first went open source, there were fears the engine wouldn't be licensed, as the original agreement was only for the modeling and animation assets. But it looks like recent releases (including 2.40) have been bolstering the engine's features. Key components in this one involve the materials and shaders within the game engine. Previously, well, they sucked. Now you can program pixel and vertex shaders, and use most of the materials you'd find in Blender. The armature system is back, as is sound support. All this and several killer Python tools to boot. If you've never tried Blender before, this is a great time. Now I wish they'd fix the browser plugin...

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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