Bat Storm Applies for a Job - iClone Lip-sync Animation Contest 2021

Bat Storm, Day Job by TET.

This month Reallusion launched its iClone Lip-Sync Animation Contest in which animators are asked to make a 30 second iClone animation created using one or more of iClone's lip-syncing and facial animation tools or plugins.

This includes; AccuLips, ExPlus, Facial Mocap, and even the new iClone plugin for Replica's AI TSS voice system.

If you'd like to enter you still have plenty of time as submissions close on September 30, 2021. The total prize pool is valued at over USD$40,000 with first prize being $3000 in cash.

If you don't have iClone, but are interested in giving 3D animation a try, you can download free 30 day trials of iClone 7, Character Creator 3, 3DXChange 7, and Unreal Live Link, which can all be accessed from the competition site.

There's also 50% discount for perpetual licenses if you do decide to purchase any (and I do highly recommend - and use - iClone 7 and Character Creator 3 as two of the easiest 3D animation tools to get started with - especially if you're already familiar with Cartoon Animator 4).

Bat Storm, Day Job - My Entry and Behind the Scenes

Given that 30 seconds is not a lot of animation to complete when you have Reallusion's time saving tools for lip-sync and facial animation, I decided to give the contest a go. View my entry below.

If you're not familiar with Bat Storm, he's a character I created over ten years ago and have written about many times in my quest to bring him from 2D to 3D animation. Reallusion's iClone 7 and Character Creator 3 finally made that a reality without me having to learn 3D modeling.

My entry is inspired by a very old Bat Storm Animated short called Financial Crisis (part 1) in which Bat Storm applies for a second day job in order to pay his bills.

The voice was done using Replica's AI, Text To Speech voices which, I feel, are the best TTS voices I've come across since they're based on actually human voice samples.

The Bat Storm character was created with Character Creator 3, and all animation was done in iClone, with exception to the two characters you can see over Bat Storm's shoulder.

Water Valet animated Short.

Long time readers of this blog will recognise them from my animated short, Water Valet. The two characters were exported out of Cartoon Animator 4 as a transparent PopVideo and imported directly into iClone7.

If you would like to see a more in depth overview of how I created my entry, I put together a behind the scenes work-in-progress video (which was a requirement of the competition) detailing every aspect from start to finish. Watch it below.

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