Xtranormal


So I don’t know if y’all have heard about this little website that is becoming all the rage or not. My guess is that you probably have because of the Geico commercials of robots talking about how much money they can save and stuff, and presidents dancing about saving money. The website is called xtranormal.com and it is gaining popularity. I decided to spend some time on the site and check out what it can do. The premise of the site is essentially text videos. So you create a written story board and then pre-recorded voices and animation act it out. It’s pretty easy and quite hilarious. They have simple templates to very complex options where you can design characters, actually determine camera angles, add in non verbal/facial expressions, etc. So pretty much you can decide how much time you want to waste…just a few hours, or maybe a whole afternoon. Anyway, I thought I’d try it out and see what they were like.

For those of you who don’t know, Laura and I really like playing games. Whether they be card games, acting games, board games, word games, dice games, whatever. Games are great to play with friends and talk and hang out. Recently, we have really enjoyed playing a game called Settlers of Catan, by the way, just bear with me because everything will come together. We learned how to play this in college and the more we play it and meet people the more we’ve realized that there is like an underground subculture of Catan addicts of which we were becoming. Suddenly, everyone we knew was like, “you play Catan, me too, we should play.” Now to an outsider, the game can kind of seem complex and ridiculous, however, it really is fun and it can get really intense quite frankly. So we have been playing the game for a while and recently got some expansion packs and extension packs to make the game a little more complicated.
So this is how I arrived at a topic for xtranormal. As I was on the site, I thought about making a short text video about the gaming subculture that adores Catan (seriously, people make cakes, t-shirts, pillows, and even halloween costumes about this game…just check out google images or the facebook group). After a few moments of thinking about where to go with the plot, I just thought of how it must sound when we describe the game to someone who has no clue about the game and then about 40 minutes later ( I used the simple template) I created my first xtranormal video about a topic that has captured the heart of many gamers and especially Settlers of Catan gamers, which if you haven’t played, you should because it is fun. You can see my creation below

Disclaimer: This video will not be funny unless you have an idea about what the game is and how it is played. If you play a lot, you will probably appreciate the video more!  Anyway, what are some of your favorite games to play?

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