The Christmas Animation Rush - Five Apps to Create Your Last Minute Animated Holiday Messages

Merry Christmas from Animation and Video Life.

It's the most wonderful time of the year... well not yet. The Nightmare Before Christmas is not just the animated Tim Burton movie, it's also the nightmare of trying to make your own animated holiday messages in the week before Christmas. Animation takes time. Why didn't you start those in November?!

If this sounds like your nightmare, here are five free or low(ish) cost apps to help you back to sharing the joy of the season with animation, so it truly will be the most wonderful time of the year.

Cartoon Animator 4 (or iClone7)

Reallusion Marketplace search 'Christmas'.

If you're already a power user (or even know your way around it a little bit) you'll know CA4 is one of the fastest ways to make completely custom animations. The Reallusion Marketplace has a bunch of Christmas content you can utilize, just don't be too ambitious. Drop in a background, throw in a Santa character, record a short message for him to say, animate him with premade motions and you're good to go!

It's pretty much the same workflow for iClone7 if 3D animation is more your style. Check out all the Christmas Marketplace Content available.

Animaker - Christmas Video Maker

Animaker Christmas Template.

I've favorably reviewed Animaker in the past. In particular I like the art style of much of their content library which leans toward a more friendly cartoon style than corporate infographics. Animaker has a special Online Christmas Video Maker available for free. Just start with their scene templates, add your own customizations and you're done.

Renderforest Christmas Animation and Slide Show Maker

Christmas Deer Opener Template.

Renderforest is another cloud based app that I've not only reviewed several of their animation tools before but actually use myself. They have all kinds of animation and video templates that you can further customize which you can view here. Videos can be downloaded, with watermark, for free at 360p or you can purchase the video in 1080p and no watermark for a one time fee (if you don't want a paid subscription).

FlexClip Christmas Video Maker

FlexClip Boxing Day Template.

FlexClip is a similar service to Renderforest with their own set of Christmas templates. A lot of the templates here are a little more geared towards businesses, so if you have a last minute holiday sale to promote or want a fun video invite to the office Christmas party this may be the app for you. Free exports are in from 480p up to 1080p if you're willing to have FlexClips intro cards added to the front of the video. Upgrade to a plan to remove this.

Jib Jab eCards and Holiday Video Maker

Jib Jab Twerk shop animated card.

Jib Jab has been around for quite some time and specialize in putting you, your family and friends into eCards and videos. You can sign up and edit cards with a free account but you cannot share (or even fully preview) anything without an annual membership which is USD$24.00 per year. It's a little frustrating but the cards are so easy to make (literally minutes) you may just go for the subscription and use it for occasions all year round.

Finally, as a Christmas Bonus, if you do need some Christmas Audio Barrie McDermid (who has also been featured in this blog before), has a Christmas pack of speech samples and music available from Garry Pye Creations, Props n' Stuff online store.

Eight 2D Animation Apps For Your Phone or Tablet Mobile Device

M obile productivity apps have become so capable that they can be great alternatives to their PC/MAC equivalents or serve as great tools in their own right when you're away from your desk. While some apps simply mimic their desktop counterparts, others offer well thought out, touch-friendly interfaces that are easier and more fun to use. Every so often I check out what's available for 2D animation for Android devices, since that's what I use, that can complement my workflow with Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5. Some may be available for Apple devices as well. Below I've listed six free (F) apps (with optional paid (P) upgrades) on the Google Play Store that you might want to explore. Some are just fun apps on their own while others may be useful as part of your workflow on bigger animation projects. Not all are exclusively animation apps and could be used on any production. JotterPad (F/P) The name JotterPad makes this sound like a notepad application but it's ...

Custom Animate Your Christmas Messages in Minutes Using Any Character Image with Good Quality Lip Sync

B ack in December of 2023 I created a video showing you how to quickly Make a Festive Animated YouTube/TikTok Short! , about 18 seconds in length, using Cartoon Animator and ElevenLabs for a pretty good, AI generated Santa voice. The resulting Christmas message actually took me a couple of hours to create despite the tutorial video only being around 30 minutes. Create Comparable Animations in Minutes with Generative AI Fast forward a couple of years and you can create easily comparable 2D animations with any number of image to video generative AI sites that also support audio and lip syncing. Some of the best can do full body animation, music, and character voices all in the one prompt. I particularly recommend OpenArt AI as your all in one AI tool for advanced generative AI. However if you want something that can just animate a pretty great, talking head image with lip sync, that doesn't require a lot of noodling around to find and learn all the settings, then LipS...

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D...

OpenArt Versus Dzine: AI Consistent Character Training Compared

TET2d Avatar Image created with Dzine . R egular readers of Animation and Video Life will be familiar with my alter ego, 2D avatar character, TET, who is both the face of The Lazy Animator Cartoon Animator Tutorials, and is currently part of my Resident Dragon joke cartoon series. It is my goal to use him as an animated avatar for both my Lazy Animator video courses and my Cartoon Animator tutorials that you'll find on my @AnimLife YouTube channel . Unfortunately I don't have the time to animate him for every single project. Even with Cartoon Animator's time-saving workflow I wouldn't be able to produce animated content quick enough. Which is why advances in AI animation is something that is increasingly more interesting to me each day. Consistent Characters Before we get there I have to overcome one of the biggest hurdles in AI I've come across... reproducing my art style consistently. I don't want an approximation of my characters, I want my characters looki...

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se...

Wonder Unit Storyboarder - Free Storyboarding Software for People Who Can (or Can't) Draw

Wonder Unit Storyboarder. As an independent and solo animator I'm always tempted to try and skip storyboarding my animated shorts because they're usually only single scene sketch comedy type jokes. As a result I have many unfinished projects that kind of petered out due to having no clear finishing line. Storyboarding your productions, no matter how small, gives you a step by step guide of every shot that needs to be completed (no planning shots as you animate). It also allows you to create an animatic that gives you a rough preview of the finished production. In short, you shouldn't skip storyboards as they, generally, increase the chance of the project being completed. Disclaimer - I'm Not a Fan of Storyboarder Upfront, Wonder Unit's Storyboarder is not my preferred storyboarding software. However it's completely free, has a number of very compelling featu...

Creating an AI Digital Avatar and Voice Clone of Myself with Free and Low Cost AI Tools

O ver the years I've looked at various ways of creating and animating a digital avatar, from simply creating a character for Cartoon Animator and voicing and animating it myself, to creating a live motion capture ready Vtuber avatar puppeted and voiced by me in real-time. In the last year or so, making photographic images talk, using AI and AI voice cloning has really progressed. To the point where I wondered if I could create a photographic AI avatar of myself, complete with my cloned voice, that I might use on some of my videos? Creating My Avatar: Artflow To create my avatar image, as far as I'm concerned, Artflow.ai is the best value AI site for creating consistent digital characters (or 'actors' as Artflow calls them). That's pretty much their entire focus. Artflow's actor model training user interface. You get your first actor for free, 100 free credits per month (which equates to 100 still images per month - get an additional 50 credits if you sign...

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