For both, I tried out the YouTube integrated creation service that lets you directly publish into your YouTube channel, and also lets you sign in with your YouTube/Google account.
The similarities
The capabilities and business model of both Xtranormal and GoAnimate are pretty much the same. You can select from a number of 'worlds' how your animation should look. I opted for the 'cartoon world' on GoAnimate and the 'Suitz' office environment on Xtranormal. Both tools allow you to create good looking animations and use build-in text-to-voice capabilities to speak out the dialogues. Both have a very light learning curve and you can get a basic 'hello world' animation out in minutes. Both also use a freemium model. You get a handful of free scenes, voices and actors, and you can use 'points' to buy more. When you set up your account you get a set of free points, and you can buy more in a package or via a premium subscription. I went for the free stuff. I noticed that on GoAnimate every text-to-speech conversion costs points but I didn'r ran out for the 4 cartoons I made. On Xtranormal they calculate the points you need to buy all the actors and scenes you are using. The published version will have a watermark of the tool and comes with a little advertisement for it at the end. But that is what you pay for using the free version?
The differences
The differences are mainly in how the animations get created. Xtranormal has the simplest approach of the two: their slogan is 'if you can type, you can make movies' and that pretty much is how it is done. On Xtranormal you select the environment/scene, one or two actors, and then you you use the dialogue editor for the voices, gestures and facial expressions you need. Xtranormal takes care of all the rest and will select camera angles automatically. The dialogue editor is simple and powerful enough for basic conversations. I liked how you can drag facial expressions and gestures and sound effects onto the right spot in the conversation. The simplicity does come at a cost of lower control of what is happening. You can for example only have one scene in a movie, only two speaking actors, the tool will select where your actors stand or sit, and you can't control camera angles.
GoAnimate offers a richer editing tool. A movie is a stream of scenes. In every scene only one character can speak, but every scene can have a different background, set of actors (up to 3), additional objects and special effects. It takes ten to fifteen minutes to figure out the tool and its possibilities, and an excellent tutorial takes care of that the first time you make a movie. Instead of a separate tutorial the training is present live into the tool and gets you up to speed in no time. When you want to edit an object, effect or actor in the scene, just click it and the property box will pop up. For actors for example you can control the direction they face, their emotion and gestures, voice and text they speak. I think I spend about 30 min on each of the cartoons I created.
The verdict
I like both tools and they both have their sweet spot. If you want a tool that is simply animating a monologue or dialogue, creates beautiful 3D animations and takes care of all details like camera angles, go for Xtranormal. If you need more complex animations that have different scenes, actors, objects and want more control over every aspect of the animation, go for GoAnimate. Paying a little bit of money unlocks more scenes and actors, and better quality text-to-speech voices.
The result
Here are two of my cartoon animations, one with each tool. You can see more in my previous blog post on future leadership scenarios.
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