Creative tools

In the course of research for an ongoing project, I've discovered a number of new (to me at least!) creative tools for working with or generating video content and presentations which I think show real potential for learning:

Muvizu - This is a standalone application for Windows which links in with a online community and allows for the quick and easy creation for 3D animations. The potential sophistication of the final production in terms of lighting, motion and camera direction is quite astounding to behold, and the interface looks incredibly intuitive. The closest analogy I can draw is like a super-charged xtranormal.com without the charging for assets. As far as I can tell, it does not do text-to-voice either, but does do lip synching to recorded dialogue. The online community seems to be pretty well thought out and is developing steadily allowing creators to take on the role of a director or producer and gather participants from within the community to complete their project.

Kerpoof - This is a web-based creativity tool which allows users to create animated short films, still comics, pictures and story books in an anime style with a very graphical, infant friendly drag and drop interface.

Google SearchStories - I have of course been familiar with Google's Search Stories ad format for a while, but never realised that they have a tool which allows members of the community to create SearchStories of their own by entering a list of search terms and then highlighting information in the search results which tell their story particularly well, then choosing a sound track for the story. This is a fantastic format for a new take on storytelling and narrative and has great potential as a medium for literacy activities.

Stupeflix - This is an online video editing and production tool in the vein of Animoto, though you can incorporate video clips as well as photos into slick templates and have more control over transitions, etc than Animoto gives you. The en result looks lie something which has come out of iMovie, which is really saying something for an online video editing tool.

Hope you find one or more of these tools useful, and please let me know of any others along a similar theme!