Animation and Video Life

Dr. Metal and Mr. Robotix. Starting up a one person, independent animation studio, creating an original series, seems like a daunting task but this article's featured animator, Ray Hohnecker, shows that if you just keep the animation simple, and focus on story, you can still create something extremely engaging that keeps viewers coming back for more. Originally Ray sent me the fifth (and latest) episode of his animated series, The Adventures of Dr. Metal and Mr. Robotix . I was so interested in the premise and humor that I went back to the first episode to see how things began, enjoying that episode so much, I watched the next, and the next.  All you really need to know is that Dr. Metal is an evil genius and inventor plotting world domination.  Watch episode one below. If you enjoyed the humor as much as I did you'll want to view further episodes right now. The full playlist  is on Ray's Manta Team Studios Channel on YouTube. To find out more about Ray, Manta Team Studios

Preparing images for animation with Photoshop Express. If you're like me, when you hear the name Adobe, you immediately start thinking about cheaper, non subscription based, alternative software. Regardless of how you feel about Adobe subscriptions, there's no denying their actual software is really good. Particularly Photoshop which is as much a verb as it is a photo editing/artist tool. Adobe Photoshop Express is a free, cloud based photo editor, that gathers together a select few of Photoshop's most useful photo editing features for you to use as much as you like. You will have to sign up for a free Adobe Account to unlock all of its features but you will not be billed for anything or be funnelled into any kind of paid plan. You'll just see the occasional Adobe ad as you use Photoshop Express. There's nothing here that you probably couldn't achieve in other free Photoshop alternatives like Krita or Photopea but, if you've never used those apps, and y

After creating my previous tutorial How to Create Cartoon Caricature Faces from Photos Using Krita , I wanted to create a complimentary tutorial showing how to rig those faces for animation in an application that is equally easy to learn simply by following a step by step guide. Reallusion's CrazyTalk 8 is a highly under rated application for creating talking head style animations. For example if you wanted to create an animated vlogger character CT8 will let you do that extremely quickly, with auto-animations, and auto lip sync. While it excels at animating 2D talking head characters (created from photos and your own artwork) one of its most unique features is the ability to create 3D Human style character heads from photos. Incredibly you have so much control over modelling every aspect of the face and head that the software really lends itself to creating 3D caricature style heads. Learn how to rig heads like these in CrazyTalk 8.    CrazyTalk 8 is a legacy product that will n

Replica Studios TTS App. Image: Replica Studios It really pays to attend Reallusion's free animation demonstration Webinars. At a recent webinar, host, Kai DeNeve, featured Replica Studio's A.I. Voice Actor system . Replica uses Artificial Intelligence to learn a real voice actor's speech patterns, tone, and inflection, which can then be used with their Text To Speech (TTS) system to produce the most realistic computer generated voices yet (or at least that I've come across). You can even fine tune how individual words are said and more. Their TTS system works through a downloadable desktop app for Mac and Windows. There are also bridging apps if you want to use their system for voices in UnReal and Unity Gaming systems. Sign up for a free account and get 30 minutes of free voice downloads (that's 30 minutes of recorded audio - not 30 minutes to download audio - that you can download a line at a time). After that you can purchase 4 hour blocks for just USD$24.00.

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