Animation is difficult. 3D animation is horribly difficult. But Plotagon offers an interesting shortcut, an easy way to build your own 3D animated movies, without requiring any technical knowledge or artistic ability at all.

There’s a catch, of course – two, really – but this free Windows, OS X and iOS app still has plenty of entertainment potential.

Plotagon keeps things simple by only allowing you to build movies from its own 3D libraries and canned actions. You’ll choose a scene – a classroom, an office water cooler – then add two characters from a list, enter some dialog, customise this with an action or emotion (afraid, bored, facepalm), perhaps add an animated action on its own (handshake, kiss, slap), then share the results on Facebook or YouTube.

Select a scene, choose your characters, enter some dialog, click Play – it’s as easy as that

This is limiting in all kinds of ways. In particular, you start with only two scenes and four characters, and you can’t make them do very much. Set up a scene and you’re always asked to choose two digital actors, for instance. You can’t have three, or four; you can’t have one of the starting characters leave part way through, or another one arrive.

You can buy more characters and scenes at the built-in Store, though (typically $0.99 each), and there are some free items to choose from. As we write, free scenes include “Airport Check-in”, “Security check”, “Airplane” and “Airport control tower”, which you might be able to link in a story, and they’re all yours for a click of the Download button.

It’s also possible to customise a character’s hair, clothes, maybe add glasses or a beard, great if you’d like your actors to look like friends or family.

The end result isn’t going to win any Oscars, but just making animated characters speak your dialog presents some fun possibilities. Plotagon could have some educational value, too, as an entertaining way to help your kids construct their own stories. Worth a try.