Skip to main content

Animate Your Artwork with CrazyTalk 8 (Pipeline)

Turning this 2003 artwork into an
animation with CrazyTalk 8.
A Cow's Tail, by TET.
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 be using CrazyTalk 8, Pipeline edition, which is the full featured version of the software. If you're reading this article and thinking you may like to purchase CrazyTalk 8, I strongly recommend the Pipeline version, but if your budget doesn't stretch that far, the Pro edition will do.

Below is my example animation, created with CrazyTalk 8, featuring my cow character.



If you would prefer to watch a detailed video of how I created my animation in CrazyTalk 8,  I've got you covered below. Otherwise skip to the next heading for a more general overview of the process.



Preparation


Separating the head from the background.
Save the head as a transparent PNG file.
Before starting in CrazyTalk 8, it pays to spend some time in Photoshop (or similar application) separating your character's head from the background, and then filling in the space with the background you would have painted if the character's head wasn't there.

Make sure to save the head as a transparent PNG file that is the same size as the background and positioned exactly where the head would be if you overlaid it onto the background image.

Note that you can skip this step and just work directly with the artwork but you'll have to contend with background distortion and double imagery of the head.

Setting Up the Head in CrazyTalk 8


Once you become adept at CrazyTalk 8 setting up a head can take as little as 5-10 minutes. Your first time may take between 30 minutes to an hour as you tweak all the settings.

Start a new project by clicking on the Create a New Actor icon and select 2D Actor. Import your transparent PNG file head. Do NOT crop your head in the first step. Click the next button to start the face fitting process. If you crop the head it will become out of alignment with your background and may even be rescaled to a different ratio.

The red arrow points to the Detail Face Fitting Icon.
Click to access this step before clicking Next.
Follow the face fitting steps through according to the guide images shown. It should be fairly straight forward, though don't forget to use the Detail Face Fitting step which is easily missed if you're new to CrazyTalk 8.

Continue the process until you're back in the main CrazyTalk 8 stage looking at your newly created head floating in white space.

Import Your Background


On the top toolbar is the Background Settings icon. Click on this and import your background image.


Eyes and Mouth


At this point if you hit the play button at the bottom of the stage window you'll see your character head moving with the default idle motion. It'll look pretty good until the eyes start moving and the mouth starts to open.

Here I've customised the Iris with graphics
from my original artwork.
You can improve how these look by adding custom eyes and teeth from the Actor Elements Tab of the Content Manager.

CrazyTalk 8 comes with an entire range of custom eyes in different folder categories (found under the Actor Elements Tab of the Content Manager). For my characters I often find the Comic eyes are a good starting point. Just double click on the eyes you want and they'll be swapped into your character's head.

From here the Eyes icon across the top toolbar will be activated allowing you to customise the look of your eye further.

The additional eye iris graphics I created
from my original artwork.
In the eye settings window you can change everything, and even customise each eye individually. For my cow character I replaced the iris' with those from my original artwork, adjusted their scale and position individually, and turned off other eye features like makeup, eye light, and eyelashes.

Adding custom teeth.
Similarly, there is a good range of included teeth options too (also found under the Actor Elements Tab). Adding teeth to your head will activate the Teeth settings icon on the top toolbar. Click on it and you'll be presented with a number of ways to customise your teeth and mouth interior.

As with the eyes you can replace all the graphics with your own artwork but, unless your original artwork has the teeth showing, you should be able to find something suitable from the existing options. The main adjustments you'll want to make are rotating and scaling the teeth to match the size and orientation of your character's head, and adjusting the whiteness, if the teeth seem too bright.

Now You're Ready To Animate


After customizing the eyes and teeth you're pretty much good to go. Click the play button and you'll see your character's head move with the default idle motion already on the timeline.

It's beyond the scope of this article to show you how to animate with CrazyTalk 8. However, the general workflow is to record your dialogue and add that to your character first. Next add any automotions to the timeline that emphasise what the character is saying. Finally tweak the motions by adding key frame adjustments on the timeline.


Taking it Next Level with Full Body Animation


CrazyTalk 8 is an ideal animation tool for creating 'Talking Head' style animations very quickly. However, if you want to take a step up to the next level and include full body animation too, then Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 (and Cartoon Animator 4) are the logical next step.

Both have the familiar head creation tools of CrazyTalk 8 but also have tools for animating your character's body and adding more depth (and animation) to your backgrounds. I'll be looking at this in a future article.

Popular posts from this blog

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Should You Buy or Upgrade to MOHO 13? *Spoiler* Yes. Yes You Should!

MOHO 13's New Character Set. 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 ha

TimeBolt: Fast Video Editing for Anyone Creating Online Courses, Podcasts, or Vlogs.

I resisted making tutorial videos for a long time because I don't like editing. Specifically I don't like editing me teaching as I step students through a process during a screen record. I have a tendency to insert long pauses not just in the middle of sentences but between multiple words in the middle of sentences as my pace matches what I'm doing onscreen. This makes for very long and very slow paced video tutorials. To counteract this I have to edit out all the pauses. This can take hours, or even days on particularly long tutorials. For example, when I created my main course, The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator , I literally injured the thumb on my right hand, operating my mouse, as I spent weeks taking out all my pauses (seriously, I had to wear a thumb brace for a few weeks to fix the pain). Recently I came across TimeBolt , a very affordable, fast editing application with the featured purpose of removing all the pauses from your video (and even

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. 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 w

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determ

Creating a G3-360 Head From a Single Photo in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator

Source Photo from Generated Photos . Ever since Reallusion introduced the G3-360 Character Head into Cartoon Animator 4 I've wanted to see if their 360 Head Creator tool could be used to create an animated head using a photo. Part of the reason I've never given this a shot, until now, is that I just assumed it would be difficult, and require a lot of photo editing to blend out the sprite edges. It turns out, creating a photographic G3-360 head is not that much more difficult than creating a cartoon head, and can be done using a single photographic image using my own G3-360 head rigging system . While this article isn't intended to be a full tutorial, I'll run through the basic steps of how I achieved my photographic G3-360 head, shown in the comparison below, of a Cartoon Animator Morph-based head on the left, and my G3-360 head on the right. Pros and Cons Cartoon Animator's morph-based head system is ideal for animating photographic faces. It uses a semi 3D wire me