Webkinz Ganz Studio
After being on Webkinz World for quite a while, maybe six months, I finally discovered he Studio Movie Maker. Oh, that sounded like a lot of fun! I love writing stories and it would be so cute to have the little actors you could buy in the W Shop acting out my story.
I purchased the Webkinz Studio for 1,000 Kinzcash and bought a few actors and sets, including a Pirate, Princess, Knight, Ship background and Castle Background, along with a few other things. It cost quite a few pretty Kinzcash pennies.
I was more than a little upset when I went to make my first Webkinz Studio video. It turns out you cannot give your characters names. Even simple names that even Word Processor recognizes, such as Bob, Sally, Robert, etc. are not recognized and when the Studio does not recognize a word it will not allow that word to be used. Well, fine, they don’t want names. You can work around that by never naming anyone. Though this is sad for children, since they (and I) love naming the things we create.
Of course, curse words are not allowed to be used, and this makes complete sense. No one wants a child making stories with bad words in it.
BUT! words such as ridiculous, superfluous, beautiful, specifically, especially, harmonious, etc. are not allowed either. These are obviously not curse words, and yet they are underlined in red just as curse words are. You can see examples of this in the story below. In no world would I type “She is pretty” when “She is beautiful” is far more appropriate for the emotion (not to mention when adults are speaking they don’t usually use pretty). It seems, to me, that a child is punished for having a large vocabulary. The Webkinz Studio only wants very basic vocab. words. Oh, vocabulary isn’t an allowed word either, so maybe they don’t want vocabulary at all (har har, get it?).
Slang is also not allowed. Gonna, wanna, etc. My Word Processor recognizes these words, but Webkinz Studio doesn’t.
Only two actors are allowed in each scene. This is understandable, as it is complicated enough to have two characters for a young child.
You can only store two videos at a time. This was almost heart breaking even for me. And I’m a big girl who knows how to save her work in an offline format.
I had big ideas for a long story that involved multiple characters and could be broken into various ‘movies’ or chapters as I would use them. That I could only have two of them at any given time on the Studio makes me sad. How must a child feel when they have a third idea and must make the choice between deletion or just losing that idea?
Below is the chaptered story I had in mind. I’ll title the whole thing when I finish it and think up a title. I have fixed it up in comic panel format because it entertained me to do it that way, but the single frame panels are also available so you can see what each looked like on Webkinz Studio.
This is the first scene of my story. Our pirate is plotting to find his love… or is he only lusting after her? Pirate Black Bear is dealing with a very sinister Fairy Godmother.
I changed the title from Pirate Love to Pirate Lust to publish here. I was not allowed to, obviously, use the word Lust on Webkinz World, which I won’t complain about.
Sadly, my wicked Fairy GODmother must be called a Fairy Mother because Webkinz World does not recognize the word Godmother nor does it recognize God Mother, because God is a no-no word.
I know this is hard to read. Sorry. I couldn’t make it any bigger in comic form. You can view the single frame photos below though and the words are much easier to read. Just click the image and it will enlarge.
Our sweet Princess Chushu appears to be in love. But her love is not of the proper birth. It also doesn’t appear to be that she longs for Pirate Black Bear. How will the Pirate take this? The good Fairy Godmother will help her!
It seems all the censoring in the world (or Webkinz World) can’t stop me from finding a way to get innuendo in there. It’s tongue in cheek and can be taken in an innocent way anyway.
Again, hard to read. I’ll think that through better when I do the next set of comics. For now, both of these stories have been deleted in order to make room for the next two. Yeah, remember, I can only store two stories at a time. I feel really bad for kids who don’t know they can save these and are forced to just deleted what was, no doubt, hard work for them to create.
The max width on this Squidoo pane is 620 pixels so I’ll know to keep it that size next time.
