Animation and Video Life

I was looking around online for an app that can 'cartoonify' a photo of a person, kind of hoping for a 'one click' solution. There are a few out there but none worth highlighting. Then I came across a video tutorial by Pixivu for Cartoonifying faces in Photoshop and wondered if I could do something similar in the free, open source drawing app, Krita ? While Krita isn't quite as elegant as Photoshop it does have some comparable features that make it very easy to create cartoon caricature faces from photos that you could use as illustrations or in your animations. They're particularly useful for using as Morph Based character heads in Cartoon Animator 4 (as shown below). Example Caricature Faces use as morph character heads in Cartoon Animator 4. While the actual steps to create heads like those shown above (and, yes, that character on the right is based on a photo of me that I snapped on my webcam) is not something you're just going to stumble across yourse

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Easy Cartoon Backgrounds and Character Design for Animation. I stumbled across Martin Belvisi's two Udemy courses, Easy Cartoon Backgrounds for Animation , and Cartoon Character Design for Animation , because I was actually looking for a beginners course to teach me the fundamentals of illustration with the free vector art application, Inkscape . Since my exact reason for wanting to learn Inkscape more thoroughly was to use it for making assets for 2D animation it seemed like a no brainer to purchase both courses. Even more so because I got both at heavily discounted prices through one of Udemy's frequent, sitewide sales.  What really sold it for me is thumbnail images used to represent each course. That background and those characters look as good as any professional, modern day, 2D animated cartoon, and they were drawn in Inkscape (which has a definite low perception problem despite it being an incredibly powerful and capable vector art tool). This stylized background looks

Skateboarding Cage Monster - Heelflip. Reallusion's Character Creator 3  is a pretty incredible application for creating any kind of human digital 3D character quickly. Its power comes from the way it can totally deform a standard human base template character into a seemingly infinite number of body types and shapes. While I wouldn't recommended it as a your only 3D character sculpting tool, it is very powerful with just how much you can edit a character's form at the vertex/mesh level. I've experimented a little with CC3's Edit mesh functions, mostly using it to hide areas of an object I don't want seen. Bat Storm's cape is a good example where I used the ability to hide vertices to completely remove the assassin's hood from the neckline up. Just on a whim I wondered if I could create my Cage Monster character entirely in CC3 (with exception to his skin textures which I edited in Krita). The character is basically a stylised human body with a monster

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

Now you can add 'After Effects' to your Cartoon Animator 4.3 projects in any video application. This blur and halftone effect was applied in Shotcut Video Editor. Reallusion released Cartoon Animator Update 4.3 with much fanfare about its new Adobe After Effects plugin which is a game changer all on its own.  The ability to export a CA4 project with its layers intact into AE for additional video compositing should be a head turner for industry pros looking to take advantage of some of CA4's more unique features and reduced workflows. For those of us not in the Adobe ecosystem (and there are a lot of you out there) Reallusion did not leave you without something to get excited about. Also in the 4.3 update is the ability to export your project as an Object Based Sequence . Essentially this exports each element of your project to its own folder, audio included. If an object has any animation on it at all it will be exported as sequentially numbered, transparent PNG files. Thi