Graphlore

The Froug Gideon Code was my first Plotagon Story experiment and learning project. For my first project, I wanted a simple drama with a little suspense to get use to the Plotagton work flow. Firstly, it is a true joy to work on my iPad with the Plotagon Story app. I can work anywhere and I was up and running in only a few minutes.

I do have experience working with other 3D animation applications (namely, MovieStorm), but Plotagon is truly amazing in its simplicity and limitations (and no, I am not a paid Plotagon spokesperson). You would think that limitations are always a bad thing, not so. When you have less "bells and whistles", you have less distractions that can pull you away from the story. It is easy to get caught up in the technology rather than on the story itself.

After purchasing the "Golden Ticket" scene and character bundle, I was impressed with all the scenes, character creation options, and costumes (if you are a serious story teller, purchase the Golden Ticket). In addition, I purchased the 2 pack UK voices. If you will be using the Acapela Group voices (like I do), it is important to understand that some voices are unusable due to the poor quality of their sound and pronunciation. For some reason, some of the female voices are crap. But, thankfully, there are many more to choose from. I also purchased all of the US English voices and I plan to add a couple more UK voices in the future.

In "The Froug Gideon Code" project, I noted two Plotagon bugs:
1) Sometimes the text plates get scrambled after rendering.
2) Sometimes the SFX do not get rendered at all.

A work around for both these issues is to exit your project and re-enter it again before re-rendering. I hope that Plotagon fixes this issue soon.

"1978" was my first attempt at writing comedy. I wanted a one minute test clip to learn what it's all about. Firstly, writing comedy is hard! Because it is so hard, I really have an appreciation for good quality comedy writers and writing (e.g., "Frasier", "The Big Bang Theory", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "Sanford and Son", etc.). I know that comedy is subjective, but we like and write what we like, nothing more and nothing less. And that's a good thing because individuality gives us the blessing of variety. What a boring world it would be if everyone laughed at the same thing.

In the "1978" project, I noted two Plotagon issues:
1) If you use the Acapela voice smileys (#AARGH01# ,etc.), the smileys will not always render if used alone. You must add a word either before or after the smiley. So far, I have not found a work around for this issue (Plotagon, please fix).
2) Since we do not have control over the exact placement of the Plotagon SFX laugh tracks, perfect timing (which is required for good comedy) is not currently possible. I do not know if this is something Plotagon can improve. The only work around is to add your laugh tracks in post production.
3) I know that some of the Acapela voices allow expressions (sad, happy, etc) via lines like, "\vce=speaker=Will-Sad\". But this does not seem to work in Plotagon version 1.32.1. This would be a HUGE benefit to story telling if Plotagon adds this option in the future.

We will be adding story telling tutorials and courses soon. We will also be discussing and sharing our Plotagon work. In the meantime, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel. More coming soon!