Animation and Video Life

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 animatio...

XP-Pen's Mascot, Fenix, in A Change of Art by TET. XP-Pen , the makers of a range of pretty sweet pen display monitors, and Reallusion , the makers of some pretty sweet animation apps, teamed up for XP-Pen's very first Animation Challenge with the theme of 'Change'. Any form of animation was acceptable with entries needing to be a minimum of ten seconds in length. Entries closed on June 16th, 2020 (sorry, this blog isn't really a breaking news site, I probably should've mentioned it back in March when entries submissions opened) so it's too late to enter, but I wanted to tell you the tale of how I ended up creating my entry in a really late evening, the day before the deadline. Watch my entry below. Remember the theme is 'Change' and XP-Pen suggested in the rules that including their mascot, Fenix, somewhere in the animation would be looked upon favorably.   The Ideas Scenes from Skater - My First XP-Pen Competition Idea. This was not my first idea...

US$2000 First Prize in each category. Nothing gets the word out like a contest which is why I suspect Reallusion is running it's Animation at Work contest only a year after the last one (previously there's been at least a 2 year gap). Nothing wrong with that. Cartoon Animator 4, released earlier this year, is a great application for creating 2D animation quickly and easily, with a first prize of US$2000.00 up for grabs in each category, that should attract plenty of new users. Entrants have until October 31, 2019 to submit a 2D animated short into one of four categories, Business, Comic, YouTuber, and Education, for a chance to win. Each category has specific entry requirements so be sure to read the rules for details. Prizes are the same in each category with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes of US$2000, $1000, and $500 respectively. As well there are additional early bird prizes (and probably more eyes on your entry) if you're within the first 150 entrants. If you don...

Mr Bowlsacc by Francesco Tammaccaro As promised in my post showcasing my own entry into Reallusion's Animation@Work Competition for 2018, this is my post letting you know the winners have been announced . This time my entry didn't even manage a special mention, unlike my entry from four years ago that won a Best Animation award in its category despite being shorter, taking less time to make, and featuring far less technical skill and actual animation, than my current entry. The fact is, in four years, awareness of CrazyTalk Animator, and the number of people who've become proficient with it has grown to a more competitive field. Demonstrated by the overall winner from 2014's competition , Garry Pye, coming in at third place with an animation that is easily streets ahead of his work with CTA from four years ago.

Reallusion is running its Animation@Work Competition again. I've been away, not writing blog posts, so I could focus entirely on getting my entry done. Now that it's finished, this post I'm going to run through the creation of my entry and highlight some of the techniques I used to create it. As per 2014's competition I'm entering the Business Animation section of the competition, presumably playing to my strengths, and allowing me to create an animation entirely from pre-existing content store library elements. This category is judged mainly on story, story tempo, sound design and animation skill. There is a preference for significantly modified content store characters but it's not an essential requirement (which is where my entry is at its weakest - none of my characters are modified at all from their base character).

Reallusion's Animation@Work competition is back after a four year hiatus in which time CrazyTalk Animator has grown from version 2 to 3 with features making it easier to use, more time saving, and more powerful than ever for 2D animation. Create an animation with CrazyTalk Animator 3 and enter it into the competition for a chance to win up to US$2000.00. CrazyTalk Animator 3 literally caters to all skill levels of 2D animator from the complete beginner with no drawing skills whatsoever to the power user who loves nothing better than to bring their own original artwork to life with the least amount of effort.

I haven't posted to this blog for nearly a month because Animation4Business projects have been monopolising my time. As well, I prefer to write about actual projects I'm working on over writing fill in posts like reviews (of which I have a couple I've been meaning to do). The last week or two I've had some time to get back to my Random Testing Unit short animation project so I thought I'd give you an update on that as well as my Comedian animated short.

Reallusion's Comedy Contest. Reallusion, the creators CrazyTalk 8 , which makes animating 2D or 3D talking heads easy, launched their latest animation competition, The CrazyTalk Comedy Contest . The competition closes on June 24th, 2016, which is plenty of time to learn CrazyTalk and submit a 60 second comedy animation created with the software. Even better, if you don't own CrazyTalk 8, you can still enter as Reallusion is making a special free edition available for download from the contest page. Making this the ideal time to give it a try and possibly win over $1000.00 in cash. Of Course I'm Entering...

Jimmy the Superhero by Gary Pye. Reallusion announced the winners of their Animation@Work contest this week. I was fortunate enough to take away one of the three Best Video prizes up for grabs with my promotional video for my new Animation 4 Business Premium Service . I'm now the proud owner of a copy of Magix Movie Edit 2014 Premium Edition software. Whilst I was obviously hoping for the major prize, there are indeed a lot of talented CrazyTalk Animator users out there. Watch the Competition, winner announcement video for a good cross section and preview of all the winning entries. I did pretty well considering I only started learning CTA2 properly last December. Whilst there were many great entries I was very happy to see the winner, Garry Pye, won with a very funny video about Superhero Training. Regular readers and viewers of my work will know that Superheroes is a recurring theme. Gary is also a fellow Aussie and creates content packs for CTA that you can purchas...

Reallusion, the creators of Crazy Talk Animator, are holding a competition titled Animation @ Work  with cash prizes of up to US$1000.00 for the top three best videos as chosen by the judges. Other prizes include software, gift cards and magazine subscriptions. There are four main categories; Business & Training, Infographics, Comedy/Parody, Animated Comic. Entries must be submitted via the competition website before May 5th 2014. The competition had five early bird prizes for entries submitted before March 31st which I attempted to try and score with my entry to the Business & Training category below. Unfortunately it was not to be and I missed out on a free copy of Reallusion's soon to be released content pack,  G2 Power Tools, Volume 2. Although I really did want to win the content pack this particular entry was more an exercise in seeing if I could create a business explainer video within my usual 14 day turnaround time for an explainer video crea...

TotallyEpicHD GoAnimator TotallyEpicHD  is the April winner of my GoAnimate, Get Featured in TET's Blog contest . TotallyEpicHD has had an account with GoAnimate since April of 2010 and in that time has amassed 757 fans and published 17 animations. TotallyEpicHD chose to feature a music video, Elvis Presley's Hound Dog, saying... I chose Hound Dog because it was probably my best animation skill wise (rather than popularity) and the feed back that I got from it was very pleasant and made me confident to represent my work. Keep reading after the video for more of TotallyEpicHD's behind the scenes commentary. Hound Dog by TotallyEpicHD on GoAnimate Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate. Inspiration... I was inspired to make it because my two dogs are small, and people call them the "guard dogs" as an ironic joke, and I also felt like making a music video, so, those two combined, I came up with that. Main Challenge... The main problem...

Contests are always difficult because you want to do something that really captures people's imagination or at least gets their attention. So, when you don't feel you've achieved that, it can be a little disappointing. If you've yet to read Part 1 or Part 2 of this series following the creation of my GoAnimate, What's Your New Year's Resolution contest entry then you may like to read them first before continuing. You can view my completed animation below noting that all the voices are mine. My natural speaking voice for my character and a digitally altered, lower pitch and faster tempo version of my voice for Kevin. Being More Ninja, TET Resolves by etourist on GoAnimate Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate. Once you've watched the animation you'll see there's nothing particularly ground breaking. It's a straight up conversation with a couple of cut scenes to illustrate specific points being made by the characters. You may also ...

GoAnimate recently launched their What's Your New Year's Resolution? contest on Facebook and I plan to enter. Since the deadline for entries is January 31st, 2013 I thought this would be a great opportunity to document the creation of my entry in a series of three 'highlights' posts leading up to the closing date. Ordinarily I like to show viewers my finished animations first then talk about the behind the scenes stuff afterwards in this blog so this will be a new experience for both you and I. Unfortunately there will be spoilers. Stop reading if you would prefer to see the finished work first and come back here after my entry is complete to find out how it all unfolded. House keeping out of the way, let's dive in... Inspiration The contest is about New Year's Resolutions. The kinds of things life coaches and motivational speakers love. Quite a few of them base their philosophies around the teachings of Ninja. GoAnimate has two Ninja themes... can ...

Commedus GoAnimator Commedus is the Inaugural winner of my GoAnimate, Get Featured in TET's Blog contest . Commedus has had his account with GoAnimate since September of 2011 and in that time has had two staff picks and was awarded the much sought after position of Animator of the Month for May of 2012. Commedus was able to choose any of his animations to be featured and chose one that I hadn't seen until now and am sorry I missed when it was released back in June of 2012. Prop only videos have become something of their own genre on GoAnimate and Commedus, The Wizard's Love is a very beautiful example of what can be achieved. The Wizards Love by Commedus on GoAnimate Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate. Commedus writes about his animation... I have picked my animation, The Wizards Love, to represent my work because of all the things it means to me. I know many people may think my party videos, such as The Throne Room Party 1 and 2 and Dead Mans ...

In the past I've featured various GoAnimators in this blog that just happened to catch my eye but, since this blog has become something of a resource for many members of GoAnimate, I thought it would be something of an ego boost to have their work featured here on a more regular basis. As such I've developed a competition for my GoAnimate family where by almost anyone with talent will have the opportunity to be featured right here in this blog. To announce the competition I created the animation below which features Lil' Peepz versions of myself and my dog, Oscar. (Note: If the video below isn't loading or playing click the link to view it directly on GoAnimate - currently having some issues with GoAnimate Players.) Competition - Get Featured in TET's Blog by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! The video won't mean a lot to non-GoAnimate members but if you are then watch for my Invitation to be Featured in TET...

Xtranormal, Star Trek Entry Summer Movie Contest. To begin, I'd like to thank all of you that took the time to vote for and Youtube 'Like' my entries in Xtranormal's Summer Movie Contest and the Sydney Opera House's Graphic Contest . Thanks to your efforts I managed to place a very respectable seventh place in Xtranormal's contest - where the top ten most Liked entries received a prize. Seventh won me 2000 Xtranormal points - which I think equates to about US$20.00 in real money if I had to buy those points. Still, you can do a lot with 2000xp on Xtranormal so it was great to have even placed when I thought I'd be lucky to squeak in at tenth. You can see all the winners on Xtranormal's blog . GoAnimate SOH Graphic Competition Entry. I wasn't quite so fortunate with the Sydney Opera House's Graphic Contest. My entry was accepted into the first round alongside about 53 other entries. Unfortunately I don't know if I got enough...

I've entered the Sydney Opera House's Graphic, Animation Competition . Submissions closed today and now there is on 2 DAYS for the public to vote for their favorite. The field of entries isn't  that big (I'm estimating about 40 entries) and near as I can tell I'm the only GoAnimate Entry. FIRST ROUND PUBLIC VOTING CLOSES ON JULY 20 (OMG THAT'S ONLY 2 DAYS!!!). Would you like to see a GoAnimate entry make it to round two in this prestigous competiton? Here's how you can help: To vote for my entry go to the competition page . Select 'VOTE'. Enter the name of my entry in the search box 'Relative Escape'. Then just give it a big green THUMBS UP! - Easy!  I'd really appreciate your support. There's a AU$20,000 grant 1st prize on this. I'll be posting my entry in this blog with some behind the scenes notes soon but for now if you want to see it, head over to the competition page and follow the instructions above.

Animation site Xtranormal is having a Summer Movie Contest  with a $1000 first prize and they also just released a new set of Star Trek themed characters and backgrounds called Trekkiez . I decided to combine the two into this blog post by featuring their new characters in my Summer Movie Contest entry below. If you enjoyed the above animation then I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to visit the animations Youtube Page to click the Youtube 'Like' Button under the video . The top ten most liked videos will all win a prize. As mentioned, first prize is US$1000, with second prize being an iPad 2 and third an iPod Touch (any of which I'd be happy to win but first would be awesome). The competition ends at the end of July 2011. Long time fans of my online animations may find the theme and script of the above animation some what familiar. That's because I based it upon the ideas that feature in the script of my original GoAnimate, Star Trek Quogs seri...