I’m going to have to thank my friend George Willeman for this one. Or give credit. Or blame. However you see it. On Sunday evening, November 21st, I noticed that George had posted a video link on his Facebook page. This link took me to a site called Xtranormal, and it was an infantile attempt at animated humor – and I mean that in the nicest way possible. In fact, I liked it so much, I started to poke around and see how it easy it was that even I too could create these bursts of animated childishness.
I made a couple of attempts, creating one just to wish Heidi well on her exams, and then I discovered the ‘newsroom’. I knew that the main male character resembled Larry King, but I didn’t realize until a bit later that it as actually supposed to be him…and his actual set. And the gal that was going to be his news co-anchor in my series was actually Sarah Palin. After creating just one of these, I had these characters embedded into my head, swirling in a typhoon of ideas, developing into first-rate comic heroes. I didn’t acknowledge that these were real celebs, instead opting to give them the names Garth Snodgrass and Joyce Marshmallow in first episode, then keeping those names after I got hooked on doing more.
Taco Tuesdays
Creating them is both fun and relatively painless. The templates are already set up, so you have to work within the contraints you are given. You can choose characters, voices, background music, and sets (although changing characters and sets require a fee to be paid). Once you have these, you can insert dialogue, movements, expressions, camera angles, whether an actor looks at the camera, and sound effects. So although I’m not drawing them or speaking for them, I feel as though they are truly my creations.
Joyce Got Back
I just had no idea that the characters would grow so much and so quickly, and here I share with you five examples of the approximately-two-minute editions of wacky humor-laden news broadcasts, known simply as The Evening News. I release one each weekday to the Facebook group and will keep it up as long as it doesn’t become a struggle to pull out the insane humor from my brain. So I’d say about three months. We’ll see.
Tongue Twister
If you like these creations, and want to see more, the best way is to join its Facebook fan page found here. Or you could check out my videos on YouTube found here. Or finally, you can go directly to Xtranormal and see my videos here.
Shrooms
Jolly What
Return to Thanksgiving 2010…
Hilarious!
Dave Chasteen
December 18th, 2010
I’m a big fan of you, your family, and The Terrible Catsafterme, but these are really tough to take.
Peter
December 18th, 2010
I find them quite funny! “The Amazing Snoddy,” Ha!
Denise
December 18th, 2010