Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Animated PowerPoint with Talking Parrots - Free Trial
Vox Proxy is a PowerPoint add-in that lets you use 3-D talking animated characters in PowerPoint presentations. In other words, you type in your script, and a bunch of goofy little animated characters – called Avatars -- can hop onscreen and give your PowerPoint presentation for you.
So why would you want to use avatars? Think of some of history’s great comedy teams: if you can’t be funny, you can be a straight man, and let the cartoon character tell the jokes. Or vice versa.
Better yet, you can let a crusty cartoon character play devil’s advocate during your sales pitch. For example, a sarcastic parrot can raise objections and ask the hard questions that you wish the audience would ask nicely. And who knows, maybe your audience will feel so sorry for you at being heckled by your own parrot, that they’ll immediately buy your product.
It could happen.
But another use for Avatars is hidden in the very name of the Vox Proxy product. Think of developing a self-running PowerPoint presentation for a kiosk or a trade show or a self-running sales or training CD – if you can’t give the presentation yourself, why not send a lovable character or two as your proxy?
Vox Proxy uses a Text-To-Speech engine. This translates your written text into speech. And it comes with a small army of characters and voices, and promised to be easy to use.
I installed Vox Proxy and gave it a whirl. Here’s what I did: I found an old, short PowerPoint presentation with my speaker’s notes typed into it (a six minute speech). My first thought was: hey, I’ll just pick a character that sort of looks like me – then cut, copy, and paste my speech into the Vox Proxy script builder. Let HER give the speech.
So that’s why I did. But a funny thing happened….
After a minute of having my character give the speech, I started to hate her. A stiff little character with a monotone voice, she was getting on my nerves. So I started throwing more characters on the screen. A guy in pink shoes. A parrot. A monster. A seemingly drug-addled crayon. I couldn’t stop myself. They all started interacting with each other. Havoc ensued.
It ended up being a circus.
My point is this: some presentations are just not meant to be delivered by avatars! If you’re designing a presentation and you want to use avatars, you’ve got to make it a character-based presentation. Put on your movie producer’s hat, and think like a script writer, not a speech writer. This means developing dialog, plots, action, and interactivity between at least two characters.
You can even BE one of the characters, if you like.
Working with cartoon characters is a ton of fun, and your audience just may end up loving you for it.
For a limited time, you can download VoxProxy for a FREE 30 day trial. ¶ 1/04/2006 06:38:00 PM
Vox Proxy is a PowerPoint add-in that lets you use 3-D talking animated characters in PowerPoint presentations. In other words, you type in your script, and a bunch of goofy little animated characters – called Avatars -- can hop onscreen and give your PowerPoint presentation for you.
So why would you want to use avatars? Think of some of history’s great comedy teams: if you can’t be funny, you can be a straight man, and let the cartoon character tell the jokes. Or vice versa.
Better yet, you can let a crusty cartoon character play devil’s advocate during your sales pitch. For example, a sarcastic parrot can raise objections and ask the hard questions that you wish the audience would ask nicely. And who knows, maybe your audience will feel so sorry for you at being heckled by your own parrot, that they’ll immediately buy your product.
It could happen.
But another use for Avatars is hidden in the very name of the Vox Proxy product. Think of developing a self-running PowerPoint presentation for a kiosk or a trade show or a self-running sales or training CD – if you can’t give the presentation yourself, why not send a lovable character or two as your proxy?
Vox Proxy uses a Text-To-Speech engine. This translates your written text into speech. And it comes with a small army of characters and voices, and promised to be easy to use.
I installed Vox Proxy and gave it a whirl. Here’s what I did: I found an old, short PowerPoint presentation with my speaker’s notes typed into it (a six minute speech). My first thought was: hey, I’ll just pick a character that sort of looks like me – then cut, copy, and paste my speech into the Vox Proxy script builder. Let HER give the speech.
So that’s why I did. But a funny thing happened….
After a minute of having my character give the speech, I started to hate her. A stiff little character with a monotone voice, she was getting on my nerves. So I started throwing more characters on the screen. A guy in pink shoes. A parrot. A monster. A seemingly drug-addled crayon. I couldn’t stop myself. They all started interacting with each other. Havoc ensued.
It ended up being a circus.
My point is this: some presentations are just not meant to be delivered by avatars! If you’re designing a presentation and you want to use avatars, you’ve got to make it a character-based presentation. Put on your movie producer’s hat, and think like a script writer, not a speech writer. This means developing dialog, plots, action, and interactivity between at least two characters.
You can even BE one of the characters, if you like.
Working with cartoon characters is a ton of fun, and your audience just may end up loving you for it.
For a limited time, you can download VoxProxy for a FREE 30 day trial. ¶ 1/04/2006 06:38:00 PM
