TET Project Updates and Muvizu Animated Vlog (Animation Diary)

Bat Storm and TET - Muvizu.

It's been a little while since I posted anything to this blog about my own projects thanks to that neck injury I mentioned in my last Animation Diary post update. So, now that my neck is much better, I thought I'd do a quick run down of what I am hoping to focus on in the near future in terms of creating my own animated shorts.

I have two main priorities, finishing my Infinite Monkey Theorem short, that was only supposed to take 3-4 weeks at the most to complete, and finally doing some Muvizu Bat Storm animated shorts.

Infinite Monkey Theorem

This character has been rigged
and animated in my most
recent work on the project.

Infinite Monkey Theorem has become something of a burden because it really has taken much longer than anticipated, causing me to lose a lot of enthusiasm for getting it done. I'm itching to start new projects with CrazyTalk Animator 3 but I haven't started anything because I'm pushing myself to finish Infinite Monkeys first.

To that end I managed to rig up the character in my opening scene and do the basic key frame animation a few days ago. I'm going to make this animation a priority and get it finished ASAP.

Bat Storm and Muvizu

I can't begin to describe how much I want to make a start on Bat Storm animations using Muvizu. The main reason I haven't is that I had such a frustrating experience with it when I created my Random Testing Unit Muvizu short that I haven't really been excited to go through that again.

Consequently my Muvizu animation skills have gotten very rusty since 2016, when I created Random Testing Unit, so, in an effort to familiarize myself with that software again, I decided to create my latest Animation Diary Vlog using Muvizu. You can watch that video below, and it'll give you more information on my future animation plans.

My goal was to keep my animated, animation diary very simple by reproducing the way I would film a live action vlog, using a single camera shot of me, sitting in front of my usual background.

I'd already created a Muvizu avatar of myself a few weeks back, when I thought I might try to animate something, just for fun, so it was just a case of creating a set that looked a bit like my office and I was ready to go.

Bat Storm watching TET film a vlog inside
Muvizu Play+ Studio.

All the dialogue I recorded into Audacity. It was unscripted, just how I do my usual vlogs, but I was mindful to keep things short. Next I imported my voice into Muvizu as an MP3 file, set up my character actions and started directing my character to the audio.

The whole character directing concept of Muvizu is both great and the worst idea ever. It's great for blocking in general character actions but it's not very accurate for matching specific actions to specific point of dialogue.

You can go back into the timeline afterwards and move the character actions around to better fit the dialogue but it's clunky, you can't split actions, and you can't create your own actions if none of the ones available suit your needs (as far as I know, anyways).

Thankfully though, this animated vlog didn't take much longer than creating a live action vlog - being created over two days. Giving me hope that I might be able to make Bat Storm shorts a little quicker than I did with Random Testing Unit.

Other Projects and Beyond

I do have other projects I want to get to. If you watched my video above I mention a few in that. For now I don't want to over extend myself too much or start making promises I can't deliver upon.

Once I get Infinite Monkey Theorem done, and have begun work on a Bat Storm short I'll start looking around for a new animated project. It'll likely be CrazyTalk Animator 3 related. Since I want to do more with that than I have thus far.

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