If you can type, you can make movies…

December 5th, 2010

Part of why the glass is more than half-full at The Future of Publishing: Xtranormal. If you can type, you can make movies…a very nifty site. I was going to make you a nice movie to prove it, but one runs into payment demands very quickly:

  1. The default actors and set for any Showpak (i.e. those that come with the starting scene) are free.
  2. You may use whatever actors, sets, and sounds you like and preview with them, for free.
  3. If you use premium (payable) actors or sets, you will see the points widget above the preview to indicate that they cost money.
  4. To publish and share your creations, you will need to pay for the premium actors & sets that you are using, or switch to free ones.
  5. You can buy actors and sets using Xtranormal Points, our new virtual currency, by clicking the blue ‘Buy more points’ button, or by publishing your movie.
  6. Points are available in value bundles of various sizes according to your needs.
  7. Buy a points bundle with a credit card, and then use the points to pay for your assets and publish your movie.

So instead I’ll show you someone else’s movie called, So You Want to Write a Novel (which I can’t find on Xtranormal, as there’s not a search feature. Google points of course to the YouTube version).

Voice of Reason: “You do realize it takes years of honing your craft before you’ll be ready to produce a publishable book? And that’s assuming you’ve spent the last twenty years reading hundreds of novels.”

Hopeful Writer: “I’ve been living my life. Not wasting my time reading. What do you think I am? Some kind of dork?”

The same Google search points also to a popular guidebook on this topic, by Lou Stanek, PhD.

UPDATE: January 10, 2011, A long-winded entry on eBooks, showing off another format, and the ability to ruin an animation through failure to edit: