Animation and Video Life

DALL·E + TET - "A photorealistic image of an intelligent, futuristic android robot sitting at a writing desk using a very old typewriter in an old fashioned office study that is illuminated by candle light." Where do you get your ideas from? Chances are you didn't ask a computer but, with advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), your next writing or design partner could well be a machine. Originally this article was going to just be about writing AI's. But then I finally got access to DALL-E 2, after a month or so wait, and it was the perfect opportunity to generate an image of a robot writing a script (see the feature image and caption at the top of this article. Completely AI generated image based on my prompt). If you're not familiar with these 'creative' AIs they don't sit around waiting for inspiration to hit - which would raise questions of are AI's alive?  Generally they're complex algorithms that can interpret natural text (i.e. text w

Most of us are not talented enough to perform verbal gymnastics with our voices, easily imitating people of different ages, genders, races etc. Which is real problem for solo animators with little to no budget. How do you voice multiple characters in your animations? Developments in human sounding, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Text to Speech (TTS) voices is making them an increasingly viable and affordable alternative to hiring real actors (or convincing family or friends to help out). Murf.AI is an extremely impressive online, AI voice generation service that sounds like real people. Not just a TTS service, their online studio offers a range of tools that include editing and adding AI voices to entire video projects, converting your own recorded audio to an AI voice, and uploading scripts to be converted into AI voices, and more. A selection of the 120+ available voices. Within Murf's studio you get up to 120+ AI voices in 20+ languages, as well as a library of royalty free musi

VideoProc Vlogger for Creators. I thought I'd seen virtually every free video editor application out there until I was introduced to Digiarty's VideoProc Vlogger . VideoProc is a full featured, powerful, yet easy to use, application that is ideal for independent creators and, as the name implies, Vloggers. Launched three years ago, VideoProc is available for Windows and Mac (no Linux as yet). When I saw the feature list I was expecting to be blown away, and this would become my new video editing application. Unfortunately it wasn't the case but that's not to say VideoProc isn't for you, or isn't as great as it looks. This was just my experience. Editing the Final Cut of Mia and the Tourist - Droid Seat I was all set to use my preferred, free video editor, ShotCut , to edit my animated short, Mia and the Tourist - Droid Seat that I've been working on , when I discovered VideoProc. This video editor looked so amazing I immediately decided to switch over and g

Over the past few months I've been working on a new animated short, Mia and the Tourist: Droid Seat , showing the behind the scenes of the project and reviewing the applications I've been using as I go. Since the animation has taken a bit of a back seat to the reviews I thought it was time to do a quick recap of the project so you can see all the work done so far. The Idea In this blog I covered my process of creating G3 character rigs for Cartoon Animator using Avatars created with the mobile app, Oppa Doll . Two characters I created were based on my own original characters, Mia and the Tourist, who are interdimensional space/time travellers (basically Doctor Who types). Very loosely based on myself (or at least my The Extraordinary Tourist persona) and my partner, Enigma, they first appeared as Anime style characters, with their replica, sentient, R2-D2 droid in a GoAnimate Short, The Star Wars Fan  (definitely one of my better GoAnimate efforts with all the voice work done b

Replica A.I. Voices are great for in game character voices. I first trialed Replica Studios A.I. Voice Actor Text To Speech (TTS) voices shortly after they launched about a year ago and was suitably impressed by how natural they sounded. Some voices better than others but most sounding very close to human with the right inflections at the appropriate moments. Since then they have been working on improvements and adding more voices to their voice cast library. I have used Replica Studios on projects in the past, most notably on my 2021 Reallusion, Lip Sync Contest entry featuring my character, Bat Storm.  Mia and the Tourist. This time I've decided to use Replica to cast the other two voices in my upcoming Mia and the Tourist animated short that I've been blogging the process of creating through demonstrating the apps I'm using to make it. So far I've covered scriptwriting , storyboarding , background creation , and character rigging . When I say the other two voices

Adam West's Bat suit was also a very advanced fabric able to deflect machine gun fire. Anyone who has followed my work for a long time will know that Batman is my favorite comic book superhero. That's why my character Bat Storm is modelled after Batman and not any other hero. Less known is that Adam West, more than any other live action Batman, is 'my Batman' or at least the Batman of my childhood self. That's not to say I don't like other versions, I very much do, but Adam's Batman is the one that made me a life long fan - because I've never really read Batman comics. To this day I'll fight you on the best Batmobile being the 66 TV series version (including if you put it against every iteration from the comic books). So when the YouTube channel and VFX studio, Corridor Crew came up in my suggested videos with their The Batman Trailer, but with Goofy Batman , I was there.  Watch the finished, stand alone trailer below. It's my new, favorite Bat