Make Your Own Star Trek Animations At GoAnimate.com – TrekMovie Takes A First Look

Today Star Trek is getting (re)animated, and this time you are the one calling the shots. CBS has hooked up with GoAnimate.com, a site with the motto ‘anyone can animate,’ to give fans the ability to create their own Star Trek animated stories, based on the classic Original Series. TrekMovie.com got an early look at the GoAnimate Trek site which went live this morning, see what we came up with below

 

YouTAS
GoAnimate.com’s free online application allows Trek fans to create animations without any drawing talent or the need for a technical understanding of advanced software programs, in just a few clicks you can create your own animations. This launch video gives you a general overview of how GoAnimate works.


GoAnimate Star Trek overview

At the GoAnimate.com, users can activate animated versions of the entire TOS crew (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov), plus Mirror Spock, Kang, Khan and an Orion Slave Girl. Each character has a full range of actions and expressions. Plus there are a number of classic Trek locations (like the Bridge and Vulcan and more), props (phasers, tribbles, etc), sound effects and music to fill out your animated production. And if that isn’t enough for you, then ou can also import your own images and sounds.


Create your own landing party

Once you make your animation, you can can share it with friends and social networks. GoAnimate is integrated with both Gmail and Yahoo! Mail contacts, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Reddit. And if you don’t have a lot of time you can create quick animated "eMessages" using pre-defined templates that already include different characters and scenes, enabling you to simply add dialogue and then send a quick animated note to your friends.

This new free site is a very cool addition to the world of Star Trek and shows how CBS is really trying to expand the scope of Trek and empower the fans. In a statement CBS Consumer Products Executive Vice President Liz Kalodner said:

Star Trek fans are amongst the most dedicated fans on the planet, and they often look for new ways to highlight their enthusiasm via creative channels. GoAnimate provides a platform that enables anyone to easily create their own Star Trek animated stories – with absolutely no experience in animation necessary. We are happy to provide the millions of dedicated Star Trek fans this new tool in which to creatively express themselves, and we can’t wait to see what the community develops.

TrekMovie Review & first trial animation
Science Fiction fans have always been among the most creative, and Star Trek is not at all lacking in fan fiction. But, with this handy tool you can really take your story to a new level. And, if you’re not of a creative writing brain, playing around with Go!Animate’s features will let you build your story from scratch. For functionality, this service gets five stars. You really get in depth options as to what your characters can do, say, and express. Moreover, characters can interact with props and objects. The multitude of choices you are given really allows for countless combinations to create a vivid and real story. Also, Go!Animate really doesn’t hold back when it comes to giving you good default choices for scenes and background music, which really helps.


‘how to’ demo of Star Trek GoAnimate

Some of the controls are a bit confusing at first, but there isn’t too much of a learning curve. Play around with various features and effects for a few minutes and you’re already a pro. What I like best about Go!Animate is that it is truly "fully functional". By that I mean that you can take the basic outline they give you and really create something entirely your own. You can even edit and delete elements from sets. Don’t like the bridge with furniture? Click and it’s gone!

To show you just how easy and fun it is, we’ve created a nice little example clip. It took me about 45 minutes to create in total, but that includes changing and editing scenes several times over. If you already have an idea of what you want your story to be, you could create a few minute clip in less than half an hour.
 

GoAnimate.com: TrekMovie

 

So get started with your own Trek animating at goanimate.com/startrek.

 

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The Vulcan salute just ain’t right with only four fingers.

#1
Yes, but this time you can change what you don’t like and make your *own* Trek – isn’t that just great! :)

Btw, I like Kirk’s quiff. ;)

TOP 5 BITCHES!!!!!!

Wow this is GREAT!

And TrekMovie’s animation is hilarious. Nice work guys.

lol wow

I thought I had seen it all.

If I were younger, I would have really gotten a kick out of this.

Yeah, I know what I am going to be doing all day today while I am supposed to be working. Thanks for adding me to the list of unemployed…this is awesome!

Can’t wait to play around with that site! Thanks for the tip, I never knew it was out there.

This cartoon Enterprise looks better than the new one!

It’s a trap!!!

Now this is one of the coolest sites I’ve seen come down the Pike (pun intended) in quite some time. As a self-taught artist and animator, I can really appreciate what goes into something like this. I’ve already bookmarked it and plan to visit it often.

Thanks for sharing, Anthony…great work!

Well, there goes my workday…

Wow, that’s actually kinda of clever. It’s Star Trek meets Colourforms meets Tiny Toon Adventures. I suspect Spockboy will have fun with this.

Look like a lot of fun! My kid and I will have fun with this.

So how long till someone tries to re-animate an episode of the TOS animated series?

I am going to make some Kirk / Spock erotica. Is flash the only available format or can you also download a file that can be burnt to dvd? that would be really cool.

THE WOMEN!!

=h=

Mmmmm…..mushy mush.

Alec Baldwin is going to have a field day feasting on all the nicely softened brains being created today.

Guess I’ll close up shop.

I don’t really like it. Firefox has a hard time running it. Oh well…

Awesome awesome pants.

Thanks for the great comments. We hope you like what we have worked really hard to create for you. Let us know if you encounter problems.

Alvin Hung
GoAnimate.com
Founder

Oh my goodness I will spend days on this thing I just know it.

Why did I have to grow up???

…or did I? hmmmmmmm

Vulcan has no moon

We should have a film competition for Oscar week. What do all of you think?

you can all thank me later for the awesome idea… maybe trekmovie will give away a dvd set for the top prize… you can vote for your favorite film on the right hand side poll window.

First link needs fixed in the story!

Scotty better be drinking a single-malt…

NOT CANON

Ubercool.
XDD

Too busy to make some, but I’ll see if I can find the time to build some funnies.

Great stuff!
Love Flash style animation,
and for those of you who like claymation…

http://tinyurl.com/ambo89

: )

Sulu and Chekov have swapped seats (get a life).
Guess that’s McCoy dancing by the engines.
This style of animation with a heavy border around everything seems very popular right now. Where did it originate from?
I like the floating tribbles too.

BEST ENTERPRISE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

this should become a regular thing on trekmovie

go on andy you know you want to…

@19…

Great Stuff, Alvin, saved my day…
works fine for me, Safari 3.2.1 on Mac OS 10.5.6
But it looks like I need to edit my soundtrack before the upload ;))

http://goanimate.com/go/movie/0fpNEXTcyaRQ/1

This is awesome! CBS does “get” Trekkers. I salute CBS for doing this. The best thing is, the uniforms, props and the bridge look AUTHENTIC.

Apparently these guys dont proof read their own videos. They dated their video Feb 10, 2006 instead of Feb 10, 2009. Shame to put all that work in to a neat product and open the video with a mistake.

What about minor characters like Rand, Riley, M’Benga? And Chapel?? How could they not include Nurse Chapel?

I was going to use it to animate my short story “No Beach to Walk On” that I submitted to STRANGE NEW WORLDS 10, but there’s no Rand…

???

I love Kirk’s James Cawley-esque pompadour.

I wonder where M’hress is? And Arex?

And Lt. Charlene Masterson from “Who Mourns For Lazarus?” I mean, “The Alternative Factor?”

I meant, Charlene Masters. Wotta woman!

The TREK demo is no longer available at that site.

I wonder if they’ll be making more characters, places available to unlock in the near future?

I bet they expand this to include the movies, and the other series eventually.

Haha, Trekmovie’s video was great

@22 – The proper response would be, “Damn right it doesn’t, it has a nightmare!” (That’s shamelessly lifted from “Spock’s World” by Diane Duane.)

OK…here’s my first test of the site.

http://goanimate.com/go/movie/0B2mvoEcZnNk?utm_source=emailshare&uid=0Cvnk3ytdbdQ

Hope I posted this properly. I plan on doing a longer one soon…maybe a Wrath of Khan redux…lol.

Haha!!! Looks kinda cheesy, but I loved what you all at Trekmovie came up with. |3 Cute, in a weird sort of way.

#45 – Hahaha, “BITE ME!” That cracked me up so hard. xDDD

#44 – That book is gold wrapped in platinum embedded with diamonds… THEY NEED TO SERIOUSLY START SELLING IT AGAIN.

Oooo, very nice! Time to start writing a script for an animated adventure!

LOVE IT! This is FAN-freaking-tastic. So nice to see the support and enabling of fan creations.

I know where my web browser will be spending weekends!

Finally….an animation tool and trek stuff so I could do this:

http://goanimate.com/go/user/0CkVM2ImCz28

RE: #49 – Doug

LMAO…that was awesome! If that was your first attempt at using that site, I am thoroughly impressed…and entertained.

Obviously outside components can be uploaded…very cool.