Skip to main content

Posts

Featured Story

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List 2019 - Animation and Video Life

By
Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation.

Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2019. It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there.

You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time.

All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria:

They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist.The base app/service had to be US$200.00 or less.
(In the case of a subscription service that&…
1 comment
Continue Reading »
Recent posts

Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 Released - Not So Crazy Anymore

By
If you're the kind of 2D animator that needs to get high quality work out fast then you should be taking a serious look at Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 because that is the key feature that informs almost everything this application is capable of.

Formerly known as CrazyTalk Animator 3, the release of Cartoon Animator 4 (CA4) reveals an application that goes out of its way to make high end 2D puppet rig and motion graphic animations easier to create quickly, and as intuitively as possible.

That's not to say there isn't a learning curve but another great strength of CA4 is that you won't get lost in a sea of icons, tools, menus and more. The initial user interface is less complicated and more logically laid out than one may have used to put together a powerpoint presentation.

Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Animate Your Favorite Cartoon Avatar Creator Characters with CrazyTalk Animator

By
I love a really good avatar creation app because it feeds my narcissism (I mean somebody has to take an interest me, right?). So when I came across Oppa Doll for Android, a super cute Chibi avatar creation app I immediately went to work on creating my TET Avatar as a chibi character.

The creators of the app are not wrong when they say your character "will be the most adorable character in the world." I was so impressed by the quality of my finished character I was inspired to see how quickly I could turn it into an animated character using Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3.

The fastest way to create a character in CTA3 is to put a Morph-based head onto a G3 character body rig (don't worry if you're not familiar with those terms they'll be defined as I go). For this article I decided to make a companion character to my TET Avatar, called Mia.

2 comments
Continue Reading »

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

By
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…
1 comment
Continue Reading »

CrazyTalk Animator 3: Using a Morph Based Character Head on a G2 Character Body

By
Over the last couple of weeks I've been tinkering away at developing a new CrazyTalk Animator 3 character avatar for myself. You can see the finished character in the top image of this post.

The head is my original artwork, based upon a sketch I drew of myself back in 2016 and posted to my instagram.

The body is a CTA3, G2 Character body from Reallusion's G2 Body Composer Kit Volume One (except the shoes which are from Volume two).

What is interesting about the character is that the head is a hybrid, morph based head rather than a standard G2 character head.

The reason I chose a morph based head is almost entirely because they're much quicker to make than any other type in CTA3. You can literally make them using only one image. Though my hybrid uses five images that I actually created myself (six if you count the glasses which are actually a separate prop linked to the nose bone).

As well as that, a front facing morph based head has about the same range of turning motion …
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Review: Animmaker - 10X Better than other Online Animation Video Making software (#DIY)... or is it?

By
Animaker's bold claim, right on its homepage is that it's 10X Better than other Online Animation Video Making software (#DIY). Also featured on their homepage is a cool promotional video that's dynamic, full of charming lip synced characters, with high quality animation that matches perfectly to the story being told.

If I could make anything even half as good with their studio, I'll at least buy that they're better than most of their competitors. Let's see if they live up to their tagline 'Animated Videos, Done Right!'

Animaker is a flash based, cloud animation studio application that gives you access to an entire library of thousands of characters, props, backgrounds, sounds and more, to create almost any kind of 2D animated video. In fact they make the bold claim that theirs is the largest animated library in the world of any similar online application (it's not... or if it actually is, it's not as versatile as other comparable libraries) .

P…
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Animate Your Artwork with CrazyTalk 8 (Pipeline)

By
If you're the kind of artist who likes to create characters, specifically focusing on faces, and you would like to see your creations come alive through animation, Reallusion's CrazyTalk 8 application provides an easy to learn solution.

What is CrazyTalk 8?
CrazyTalk 8 (not to be confused with Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3) is designed specifically to create 'talking head' style animation.

Impressively it can be used to animate both 2D and 3D based characters. The 2D heads it creates are actually semi 3D 'relief map' style heads that have some ability to move up, down, and side to side. The full 3D heads it creates are properly formed heads but they still have a limited turning range (you can't turn them more than about 45 degrees in any direction).

For the purpose of this tutorial I'll be focussing on my 2D painting of a cow, that I created back in 2003, with no intention of ever animating it, or turning it into a 2D animated scene.

I'll b…
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »
Related Posts with Thumbnails

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET