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 …

Animating My Artwork with CrazyTalk Animator 3 (Pipeline) - Animation Breakdown

Previously I've shown you how to animate your artwork with Reallusion's CrazyTallk 8, an app designed to make the creation of talking head style animations easy and quick.

In this article I'm going to take the same Cow's Tail artwork and animate it with Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 (Pipeline Edition) just to show you the additional animation options that this application can bring to your production.

Note: At the time of writing Reallusion is weeks away from launching Cartoon Animator 4, the next iteration of CrazyTalk Animator which has been rebranded to better reflect its ambition as a complete 2D animation studio. Everything discussed in this article can be done in Cartoon Animator 4.

What is CrazyTalk Animator 3?CrazyTalk Animator 3 (CTA3) is designed to be a complete 2D animation composition studio. That is, you'll use external graphic editors like Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, or CC Animate to create your assets before bringing them into CTA3 to set…

Learning Moho Pro 12 (Anime Studio Pro) - Part 1, Introduction

This week Smith Micro released the latest version of it's animation software, Moho Pro 12, which is actually the latest, completely revised and updated version of Anime Studio Pro 11 with a new name, kind of. As I understand it Anime Studio used to be called Moho in the beginning and this is a return to the original name.

I firmly believe in this software as a professional animation tool, as evidenced by the fact I've kept upgrading every time they release a new version, despite never having the time to even scratch the surface learning how to use it properly.

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…

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.

Quickly Create a CrazyTalk Animator G3 Character From Original Art

Creating a character rig from original art can seem like a daunting task in CrazyTalk Animator 3. Especially if, all you really want to do is put together a quick animation with characters you may never even use again.

Here's how to rig a CrazyTalk Animator 3, G3 human character, with the fewest components, whilst still being compatible with G3 character motions, and having a face capable of lip syncing and character expressions.

You should be able to do this in under an hour - assuming you have your artwork ready to go.

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