Here’s a little cartoon I whipped up this morning on Xtranormal, the site that lets you create and distribute your own animations without needing to really know what you’re doing. (When it comes to CGI, that pretty much describes me…)
It’s pretty much California Native Plant Week meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Hello Kitty. And it’s a test of how well voice synthesis can deal with some common (and less common) scientific names.
Pixar, my number is (619) 555-0213.
haha
Genius.
Heh heh…the gal’s a doppelganger for the GPS voice on our TomTom.
I need to try this out!
Love the bird song in the background! As for the pronounciation, I’m always amazed how Americans pronounce Latin. It was good enough, really…
Hilarious! Though the female voice was a little depressive, maybe she needs a little caffeine.
very amusing although it would be great if somehow you could get emotion into the voices!!
i laughed, cried and was left wanting more. i think the ending left the door open for a sequel…
Thanks, James….I’ve been saying them all wrong. It’s so helpful to learn pronuciation from Hello Kitty. You’re a hipsta…a techno rock star.
Hey, thanks everyone! I hope you had as much as I did putting it together!
Arleen, my guess is that your Tom Tom’s voice is the same voice synthesis package that Xtranormal licensed. You should try to see if you can feed it street names in botanical Latin.
David, have fun with it!
TM, what struck me most is that when faced with deciding how to pronounce the unfamiliar “fasciculatum” the program chose to use the FASC pronunciation as “fascist” instead of “fascicle,” rendering the word as fascist-culatum.
Janet, oh, I think these two characters have a history before they did this video…
Helen, I rather enjoy the flatness to the voices. The tone works really well for passive-aggressive modes of communication, something my family trained me really well in.
Maggie, the thought did cross my mind… I can see some sequels–and prequels too. I’ve blown through all my free Xtranormal points to produce this clip, but it might be worth a minor splurge to make some more episodes.
Sue, so how do YOU pronounce “fasciculatum?”
Wow! I loved it!
Wonderful!!! I’ve passed it along to a bunch of people.
I laughed, I cried. This is what the internet, not just native plant week, was created for.
Yes, the flat voices are great, in some weird mind bending way – and the timing – priceless! Good job!