Skip to main content

The Bendies - Quality Characters for CrazyTalk Animator 3 and Cartoon Animator 4 by Garry Pye

Garry Pye's Spy Guys for Cartoon Animator 4
Ever since winning Reallusion's Animation@Work competition back in 2014 Garry Pye has been a strong supporter of, and leading content creator for, CrazyTalk Animator 2, 3, and now Cartoon Animator 4 (A.K.A. CrazyTalk Animator 4).

So much so that Garry's Online store Garry Pye Creations is quite possibly the second biggest store for CrazyTalk/Cartoon Animator content after Reallusion's own Content Store and Marketplace.

Garry's Little Mates Characters for CTA 3 have been hugely successful with more than 60 different characters available.

Since then Garry has followed up the Little Mates with a new character series, The Bendies. Initially created for CTA3, all bendies released after the launch of CA4 in April have been designed with the new 360 head system, and facial puppetry compatibility (something that hasn't been a feature in the Little Mates range).

The Bendies series differ in that they feature none of the outlines that is typical of Garry's previous creations and 2D comic/cartoon style animation in general. Despite this the characters are very much very recognizable as Garry's art.

Some of The Bendies Themes and Cast.
As with the Little Mates, the Bendies, while sold individually, come in a range of linked themes for you to collect the whole set including:
  • Astronauts
  • Sci fi Guys
  • The Vikings
  • Spy Guys
  • Adventure Bendies
Since the Bendies are also proving popular no doubt there will be many more themes to come.

I recently purchased a few Bendies, including the newly released Adventurer Bendie, which comes in versions with or without his jacket, and props of his Fedora and Bullwhip (the whip is an animatable G3 freebone actor file). You also get the regular G3 character for CTA3, and the 360 head version for CA4.

In terms of animating Garry's characters, The Bendies range in particular work well with premade motions for G3 characters.

The only caveat being that Garry likes to include a lot of detail in the form of accessories attached to the character, such as long hair, bags, holsters etc. The detail and extras are great (and very welcome) but they come at a price of making some of the characters a little more labor intensive to animate.

Long hair accessories require a
little extra effort to animate.
Mostly this is an issue for long haired Bendies if you want their hair accessories to move naturally with the character's head movements. Any part of the hair that is attached as an accessory will generally need a bit of keyframing so it looks like it's reacting to gravity and physics as you would expect.

It is a small price to pay for such high quality characters that would not look out of place in any professionally produced animation production (including yours!).



Garry's online store also contains an entire library of high quality props, scenes, and even voice packs from many other artists, hand picked by Garry to compliment his work. It's very hard not to fill you cart with a bunch of scenes and props you never knew you needed but you know would really take your animated production to the next level.

Below is a scene from an animation I've started working on featuring Bendies, Vermund from the Vikings theme, and Mayday from Spy Guys, in a background set called Calm Day by Anton Bakhmat (also available from Garry's store). Lightening effects are from Reallusion's Weather Maker pack - which is a must buy for any CTA3/CA4 animator.

One of my favorite things to do is to mix and match characters together that you wouldn't immediately think would make a great team. This animation is called 'Origins' with this scene being the moment Vermund and Mayday first encounter each other.

Sometimes time travel can get awkward. Mayday arrives
at a less than opportune moment for Vermund.

If you've discovered CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Cartoon Animator 4 and have yet to discover Garry Pye Creations, go and check out all the content there, including The Bendies. You'll be hard pressed to stop at buying just one.


Popular posts from this blog

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

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

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

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

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

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

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and

Reallusion Releases Cartoon Animator 5 - One Version, More Features, Lower Price!

If you're serious about producing 2D animation as quickly as possible, while still achieving professional results, Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 makes the most compelling case yet as your animation studio/tool of choice. Cartoon Animator's point of difference has always been its ease of use and accelerated workflow. Creating fast, 2D animation using puppet, bone rigged based characters and props, on a stage with 3D depth for easy scene parallax effects. As it has developed Reallusion has incorporated more advanced features like motion capture for both face and body as well as being able to export scenes to post production tools like After Effects with the addition of plugins. After moving away from Flash based vector image support for a few years, Reallusion is back with full .SVG (scalable vector graphics) support for resolution independent graphics. They've also added Spring Dynamic physics and Full Form Deformation tools, both of which make it ridiculously easy t

Cartoon Animator 5 and G2 Characters - Why You'll Probably Never Use Them Even Though They're Great

Since I've previously covered how to get the most out of your purchased G3 and G1 characters for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5, it would be remiss of me not to look at the greatest character rig of all time, G2 characters. G2 Characters have been mostly relegated to legacy status since Cartoon Animator 3 but, as a rig that let you create fully 360 degree turn-able characters that moved in 3D space, animated with 3D motion files, and were mostly vector based, there was nothing else like them in any other 2D  software. The problem was, even with the templates provided by Reallusion for both Adobe Flash and Serif DrawPlus , they were complex and time consuming to make from scratch. They were also difficult to customize because there was no way to export and edit individual parts. G2 characters just weren't easy enough for the casual Cartoon Animator user to customize so they fell by the wayside. However they're still fully supported in CA5 with all the same functional