Looking for something possibly fun and interesting to do during the upcoming holidays? Try making a movie, but rather than film it yourself, a new free tool will let you accomplish an animated movie just by writing.
Taking a page out of the cheesiest movies — and possibly the worst animated flicks — Plotagon is a new free application for Windows and Mac that will let people create animated movies just by writing a script into the system.
The program has two sides to it, with a script writing section that offers up an easy interface to help you pick scenes for where the movies should take place, offers a few characters, and then lets you decide on the actions, movement, followed by writing their dialogue.
You fill it in as if you’re writing the movie, and then Plotagon will make a tiny (poorly) animated movie out of what you write. Characters will speak, move, and sound effects and music can play, creating what is, in essence, a short movie based on the imagination of anyone controlling it.
We don’t think the results offered by Plotagon are necessarily going to win you any awards at movie festivals, but they could easily be a fun diversion, and for the more serious filmmakers, it could be a decent storyboarding tool, making it possible to see what a potential story or script idea is like without having to assemble a film crew to find out for yourself.
That said, Plotagon doesn’t come with a lot of characters or scenes to play with, but it does offer the option to buy packs of characters from its store, with superheroes and “Alice in Wonderland” included in the first batch, and more coming soon.
Still, if you’re looking for something to do, or need something to keep the kids entertained, and there’s a Windows or Mac computer handy, Plotagon could be a fun way to waste time, and might even give them that push into making movies they always wanted.
