Animating Office People with Crazy Talk Animator (Part1)

A few months back I purchased Crazy Talk Animator Pro and have been trying to learn it ever since. It's not that it's a hard program to learn particularly, there's just so much to take in. It's definitely not like GoAnimate where you can be up and running in minutes.

Let's back up a little shall we. If you're not familiar with Crazy Talk Animator it's essentially a 2D animation studio that lets you create character 'puppets' which you can animate on any scene you can create.

The style of animation falls somewhere between cut outs and traditional animation because you can make puppets from existing photos of people, animals or objects or you can draw your own puppets completely from scratch.

As an animation studio it clearly has professional application but it's also great for the hobbyist and anyone who wants to animate but drawing isn't their strong point. It even has a whole market place of pre-made characters and sets which you can buy from or contribute your own art to (and earn money from them).

After several months of not really producing anything other than a really rough Robocop test animation (below), Reallusion (the company that makes Crazy Talk Animator), were offering their video tutorial package for the software at a discounted price. So I decided to buy it.

Most of the video tutorials are actually available, free, on the software's Youtube Tutorial Channel however I can't tell you how handy it is to have them all in one place with an easy to navigate menu when you're not online.

I think they're giving me a much better understanding of the software and what it can do. Enough for me to be a little confident in starting my first actual project featuring my own hand drawn characters.

One of my intentions is to use Crazy Talk Animator to offer business an animation service to demonstrate their products. Similar to what I'm already offering with GoAnimate but with the ability to make characters completely from scratch - and even from photos of people in the business (for something a little different). It'll be kind of a premium service just above what I can do with GoAnimate.

To that end I've decided to create a cast of my own office people who may or may not star in my business animations for clients. At the very least they will form the basis of my show reel demonstration video for promoting the service.

I'm going to be producing a series of my Studio Diary videos following my progress, the first of which is embeded below. In this video you see me create the initial characters based on some drawings I did years earlier.

The next step will be to turn them into vector drawings using Serif DrawPlus X5. Followed by importing them into Crazy Talk Animator. Which I'll do in a future post.

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Eric W. Schwartz: Cartoonist, Animator and Amiga Die Hard

American Cartoonist, Eric W. Schwartz, (whose unofficial Amiga Icon, Amy the Squirrel, is pictured on the July 92 edition of CU Amiga cover on the right) is my only real animation hero. Sure there are the big names like Disney, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and even Preston Blair whose influences can all be seen in my own cartoons but Eric did what none of the others could. He showed that really great 2D computer animation was within my reach with little more than an Amiga Computer, a copy of Deluxe Paint and Moviesetter.

This was at a time when computer based animation was in its infancy (outside of computer game animation) and Flash was something that lights did.

There were many great Amiga artists but Eric was really the only one consistently making very funny, traditional style animations. His humor and drawing style is heavily influenced by classic Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons but he managed to build on this, creating something that was recognizably Eric's own style.

I've…

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you?

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art.

Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress.

Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determine which …

Springboard - Fast Digital Storyboarding on a Budget

Storyboarding an animation is one of my least favorite parts of the creative process and yet it's also one of the most important after writing the script. It's where the planning of the visual representation of the script takes place.

The Problem....

I've struggled with storyboarding because I knew there had to be a better way than drawing tiny thumbnails on a sheet of paper with script and camera direction notes crammed underneath - an example of which can be found in my post for my music video animation, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. This method isn't exactly client friendly as my handwriting scrawls can become unreadable even to me over time.

The other technique I employed was using the storyboarding features of Celtx Script Writing Software. Celtx allows you to import your scanned thumbnails (or any digital image) into its storyboard where you can add text and camera direction into scrollable text boxes below each image - and never run out of room. I employed th…

Review: Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 - Taking a Step Back to Move Forward

CrazyTalk Animator 3's bold claim is 'The One-for-all 2D Animation'. Does it deliver? Could it be your 'go to' 2D animation tool of choice? Before I explore those questions I feel a bit of backstory is necessary.

I've been using Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator since its original incarnation that promised quick and easy, 2D animation creation. An idea that was relative depending on what kind of animation you wanted to do. Since my focus has largely been on original character animation my experience with CTA is relative to that.

If you wanted to create animated characters from your original artwork, quick and easy didn't really describe the time and effort involved. There was a lot of preparation and considerable time spent rigging its G1 characters.

Voice All Your Own Animated Characters with Voice Changer

Voice Changer by AVSoft is real time voice manipulation software that can be used for a wide range of purposes including (according to their website); Voice-over and voice dubbing for audio/video clips, presentations, narrations, voice messages, voice mails, E-greeting cards, broadcasting, etc.; mimic the voice of any person, create animal sounds, change/replace/remove voices in songs, videos,etc.

I bought it for the specific purpose of changing my own voice, to extend my vocal range, for voicing characters in my own animations.
I was fortunate enough to get this software at a significant discount that made it difficult to refuse, given that I'd never tried it, or even heard of it before. I'm not sure if I would have bought it at the full price given that much of what it can do (for my needs) can also be done with the freeware audio program, Audacity.
Voice Changer is relatively easy to install and set up. Once installed simply change you default microphone to the installed AV…

Animation 4 Business iClone Promotional Video

In my recent updates I've been teasing a new Animation 4 Business Promotional video created with Reallusion's iClone 6. It's taken me longer than expected because I've only been able to work on it for a couple of hours each day - part of my new schedule that enables me to work on many projects concurrently.

Finally the animation is finished and, although I've already debuted it on the Animation 4 Business website, Facebook and YouTube, here is the only place you can read about the behind the scenes creation process.

WeVideo - Professional, Collaborative, Online Video Editor for Free

WeVideo is a professional online, cloud, video editing and project sharing application that works right in your browser. It attempts to compete with equivalent licensed software that you can buy for your computer, such as (in my case) MAGIX Movie Edit Pro.

WeVideo is free for personal use and comes with a range of paid plans that give you more features and benefits depending on your needs and how much you want to spend. Check out their video below which gives a great overview of WeVideo's service.

In this review I'm going to see if I can use WeVideo to create a typical video for my main YouTube channel, etourist2, where I mostly upload art and animation demonstration/tutorial videos. Before we start, here's a run down of what a free account offers:

1 GB storage360p resolution15 export minutes per monthExport to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter5 invites per project390 licensed music titles
With only 1GB of storage this account is clearly targeted at short form video and …

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