Making cartoons.
There are several sites that let you make your own animated cartoons online. Some of these are Voki, Animoto, GoAnimate, Glogster and Xtranormal. There are others that let you create political cartoons or comic strips like you see in the newspaper. The best of those is ToonDoo.com.
The easiest and best animated cartoon site is www.xtranormal.com. With Xtranormal, you don't need to design characters or even be able to draw. All you have to do is paste some text in a box and hit the "action" button and you have made a movie.
Instructions
1. Go to www.xtranormal.com. There are two choices here: the download or Web versions. The program you download is called "State." It's a bit more complicated, but it has a lot more features. For this exercise, I'm going to use the Web-based version.
2. Click on one of the "Showpaks." These are templates for your movie. You can choose among Napoleon, George Washington, Sarah Palin and Larry King, and several other showpaks. You can also choose between using one actor and two. I chose the Robotz showpak with one actor.
3. This will take you to a screen with the script on one side and a preview of the movie on the other. Type whatever you want your actor to say in the script area.
4. If you just type words into the script, the movie will use the default camera angle and no expressions or movements.
5. Drag and drop the camera angles, expressions and movements you want in your cartoon into the script. If you aren't sure, hit the "Magicam" button. It will choose for you.
6. When everything is ready to go, hit the "Action" button. The program will render the cartoon and play it when it is finished.
7. When you have the cartoon the way you like it, hit the "It's a wrap!" button. To save it and come back later, hit the "Take 5" button.
8. Enter a title, description and tags for your cartoon. You can also choose the ratings for it.
9. Press the "Publish" button. This will put the cartoon live on the Web. It may take a few minutes to appear.
That's it! You have made your very first cartoon and you didn't have to draw anything.
