Animation and Video Life

Back in 1987 I saw English Actor/Comedian Kenneth Williams on television make a quote about medical specialists that has stuck with me ever since as an idea for comedy.
It's frightening to think with modern medicine and all the techniques available to them... they can't really help you. In the old days, you know, you were better off because nowadays, they are all specialists. Everyone's becoming better and better at less and less... Eventually someone's going to be superb... at nothing. - Kenneth Williams, Aspel & Co 1987
In consumer robotics it's a very relevant concept that appears to be working in reverse. We're seeing more and more consumer robots released that perform one task really well (robot vacuum cleaners for example) but we're kind of working towards the robot butler/maid/assistant, a single robot that can perform many different tasks.

An early example is the AI used in home speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home where you can automate a…

If you've bought Reallusion's Spongy Moves, Elastic Motions and Jelly Bees Emotion Props Combo Pack for CrazyTalk Animator 3/Cartoon Animator 4 you may be wondering how those little Jelly Bees are making their little bubble top knots bounce around like they do in the promo video?

Well grab your copy of CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Cartoon Animator 4 and follow along with my video tutorial below for how to make those bubble top knots bounce!



The secondary animation in my tutorial is should not be confused with the principle of animation known as 'Secondary Action' - which is a second action that supports the main action a character is performing.

The principle my tutorial demonstrates is actually known as 'Follow Through and Overlapping Action'. Actions that are caused by the main action dragging something else along with it, that then follows through and continues to move momentarily after the main action has stopped.

An obvious example is if a long haired characte…

Smith Micro released MOHO 13, their all in one, 2D animation studio, this week. The question is should you buy or upgrade to the latest version? Obviously I've already spoiled this in the title, so the actual question is why do I think you should buy or upgrade?

To be clear, I'm only talking about MOHO 13 Pro. If you're considering MOHO 13 Debut be aware that you're missing out on some of the new features, and a lot of existing features that are only available in the Pro version. Debut is fine if the budget doesn't stretch to Pro, but, if you never want to be disappointed about not having a feature, it's Pro or nothing!

The other thing I need to be transparent about is I'm not, by any stretch, a frequent MOHO user/animator. However I took the time to learn MOHO 12 Pro fairly extensively, blogging about my process and sorting out 104 free MOHO training videos into a logical viewing order in the process. I think I have more than enough insight to let you kno…

As an Independent Animator you may often find yourself recording all the dialogue for every character in your script yourself.

Or, if you work with multiple voice artists, you may get a single audio file from each artist containing all of their character's dialogue only.

If you intend to use either of those recordings to trigger an automatic lip syncing feature such as the one found in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 you're going to need to split the audio up into smaller clips.

I use Audacity to edit my audio and, if you do too, I'm sure you've probably done the laborious, manually select each clip, and export to a separate audio file.

It's a process that's fine, it works, and it gets the job done. However you're probably doing it that way because, like me, you've never really bothered to deep dive on Audacity's very powerful features.

There is a more efficient way to split a single track of audio into smaller clips and that is to use Labels. …

Ever since winning Reallusion's Animation@Work competition back in 2014 Garry Pye has been a strong supporter of, and leading content creator for, CrazyTalk Animator 2, 3, and now Cartoon Animator 4 (A.K.A. CrazyTalk Animator 4).

So much so that Garry's Online store Garry Pye Creations is quite possibly the second biggest store for CrazyTalk/Cartoon Animator content after Reallusion's own Content Store and Marketplace.

Garry's Little Mates Characters for CTA 3 have been hugely successful with more than 60 different characters available.

Since then Garry has followed up the Little Mates with a new character series, The Bendies. Initially created for CTA3, all bendies released after the launch of CA4 in April have been designed with the new 360 head system, and facial puppetry compatibility (something that hasn't been a feature in the Little Mates range).

The Bendies series differ in that they feature none of the outlines that is typical of Garry's previous crea…

I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996.

It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it.

But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs.

Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures, and Toon Hair, designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker.



The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that works as both a male or female pre teen), eleven hair style bases, with thirteen hair additions for further variation.

T…