The only thing weirder than Plotagon itself is the question of whether it’s good or bad. This video editor-esque program lets you create custom animated CGI movies with a simple, but flexible, editor on desktop and mobile. However, the end results are so awkward, stilted, and just plain bizarre that I have a hard time imagining many good uses for this that aren’t steeped in irony. Still, any creative tool that makes a seemingly complicated task easy is at least worth a look, especially if you’re an imaginative kid with filmmaking dreams or a hip executive looking for an unusual presentation tool.
Price and Platforms
Plotagon is available as a Windows 10 desktop app, as well as a mobile app for Android and iOS. Desktop users get a month-long free trial. After that introductory period ends, Individual subscriptions start at $7 per month, with prices going up for businesses and down for educators. Using Plotagon as a fun, expressive classroom activity sounds like one of its best possible applications.
The mobile version features a slightly different payment scheme. On mobile, you can enjoy a free, limited version. To access more music, scenes, and voices (as well the ability to remove watermarks from your videos), you need to either subscribe to the service or buy a one-time ticket to permanently unlock select content. Subscriptions start at $1 per month, and the cheapest ticket costs $10. More expensive subscriptions and tickets include more items.
Plotagon’s video-creation quality is very much up to the user, so it’s difficult to say whether or not the app’s worth the cost. At least the free mobile version gives you a solid idea of what the app offers.
Moving Pictures
Plotagon’s YouTube page offers plenty of tutorials on how to get started with a project, but none of that is in the app itself. Fortunately, the tool is intuitive enough that you can teach yourself the basics without much effort. I can’t fault Plotagon’s accessible interface, despite the app’s deeper, quirkier problems (which I’ll discuss later).
Plotagon movies consist of a few core elements: actors, scenes, dialogue, actions, music, sound effects, and title cards. Tapping their respective icons adds one of the elements to your linear timeline, and you can further edit it from there.
With the powerful character creator you can create 3D, Sims-style cartoon humans to star in your movie. Do their hair and dress them up. Although you can populate a scene with background extras, you can only place two characters in a scene at once due to camera programming limitations, which makes movies feel sparse.
Scenes are where the action takes place. Choose backgrounds, such as a restaurant or a computer room. Use a green screen to key in your own background image, a pretty advanced maneuver. Arrange where actors stand or sit in preset locations. Add an establishing shot so audiences can orient themselves during a scene change, although these shots typically just feel like awkward pauses (and the last thing Plotagon movies need is more awkwardness).
For dialogue, you can either record your own voice or type and use the iffy text-to-speech feature to let the computer do the synthetic talking. Lips flap vaguely in sync with the dialogue. You can alter the camera angle, and give the character an exaggerated emotional state like “scheming” or “super excited” to add more personality. Beyond talking, the characters can perform certain actions on each other, from kissing to slapping.
Finally, tie your film together by adding some stock music and sound effects (happy music, applause noises) and writing title cards. Once you’re done, export your cartoon as an HD video file right in the app.
Strange Cinema
Making movies with Plotagon is a breeze, like something out of a story-heavy, video game machinima editor. Anyone of any age and skill level should be able to wrap their head around it. The software has limitations, but I still found plenty of room for creative expression and satisfyingly fast, versatile storytelling. So, what’s the catch? The finished films leave a lot to be desired.
Despite the Plotagon’s many customization options, the characters look like a bootleg take on a DreamWorks movie, or maybe a pop-up ad for a mobile game you’ve never heard of that rakes in a billion dollars per day. The very aesthetic feels like a scam or a fake meme somehow. The stilted canned animations add to the creepy feeling.
Even creepier is the text-to-speech voice, which speaks in an artificial accent that’s borderline incomprehensible at times. You can export your video with subtitles, a must if you’re not just recording your own voice.
At their most harmless, Plotagon movies come across as generic, yet blandly pleasant, commercials for products that may or may not exist. But at their worst, Plotagon movies could easily sit alongside the nightmarish, algorithm-driven CGI kids videos on YouTube. And it’s nearly impossible to tell which way your own movies will go. Even Plotagon’s own videos, movies from the company’s own employees made using their own tools, plummet into the uncanny valley.
Compare that to Source Filmmaker, a more complicated 3D animation tool, but one capable of videos that appear much more legitimate. Meanwhile, the Episode app offers little more than text and flat images, but its fan-made, choose-your-own adventure stories shine without the bizarre CGI distractions.
B-Movie
So, what is Plotagon’s use case? You definitely won’t animate the next Oscar-winning short. Some clever, sincerely useful applications for the tool that I’ve heard include using it to make dynamic storyboards or creating corporate presentations more lively than a boring, traditional text slideshow. Between the easy editing tools and colorful visuals, I also think it’s a cool creative tool for children, especially on mobile.
Honestly, I recommend just leaning into Plotagon’s bizarreness. Once I got over my initial bewilderment, I jumped at the chance to craft the strangest non-sequitur videos. I took delight in seeing my digital Tommy Wiseau puppets mangle their lines as they recited the Mac Tonight theme song, while slowly walking out of frame. Watching Plotagon try to cobble together a natural piece of cinema from such beautifully unnatural parts is, ironically, almost heartwarming in a way that only the deepest, weirdest parts of the internet gutter can be. Is it good? Is it bad? Plotagon is simply what it is. Make of it what you will.
