Animation and Video Life

Bat Storm - Created in Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone7. Three days before writing this post I had a light bulb moment for how to create my Batman parody character, Bat Storm, in iClone so that he would look almost exactly as I imagined him. There he is right in the main image of this post, in all his 3D toon character style glory. Along the way I learned a few things about using Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone 7. Before I get into that I wanted to take a quick recap of the evolution of this character and how long it has taken to get here. Note: If you're interested, Part 1 to this post is here . It's not required reading and the same article is linked to again later. In the Beginning GoAnimate Charge Girl, Super Charge, Bat Storm, and Bat Flash. Bat Storm started life in 2010 as a Batman parody on the then named GoAnimate (now Vyond). His design was based purely on what was available in GoAnimate's Comedy World Theme Char...

Voicemod is a real time voice changer app. A common problem for hobbyist animators is finding people to voice characters. Friends are often called in to our no budget productions because they're friends and they're usually happy to help. However friends aren't always available and/or willing, and hiring voice actors can be expensive if you're making a lot of short animations just for fun. In desperation you start voicing all your own characters but quickly realize your vocal range extends to only about three different voices. This is where  Voicemod  may help. Voicemod is a free dedicated, real time voice modifying app for Windows (other OS's are in the works). It has a very simple interface that makes it easy to alter the sound of your voice to any saved voice profile with a single click. It also makes it very easy to modify any profile or even create your own voice modifications from scratch. Before I go further, while Voicemod is free you are limited ...

Bat Storm and TET - Muvizu. It's been a little while since I posted anything to this blog about my own projects thanks to that neck injury I mentioned in my last Animation Diary post update . So, now that my neck is much better,  I thought I'd do a quick run down of what I am hoping to focus on in the near future in terms of creating my own animated shorts. I have two main priorities, finishing my Infinite Monkey Theorem short, that was only supposed to take 3-4 weeks at the most to complete, and finally doing some Muvizu Bat Storm animated shorts.

Police forces in many places around the world perform roadside, random breath tests to catch out drink drivers. More recently, in some parts of Australia at least, Police conduct random drug tests in response to growing concerns of people driving under the influences of other illicit substances. In a spark of silliness, I got to thinking what else could Police forces start randomly testing for on the roadside? That's how my short animation, Random Testing Unit , began to form.

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.

Screen Shot from 'Random Testing Unit'. Towards the end of last week, inspiration hit with an animation idea I could create relatively quickly in Muvizu (so I thought). Over three days I wrote a script with the working title of 'Random Testing Unit'. I can't go into great detail about the script as it would spoil some of the initial humour. I can tell you, the basic premise is a comedy sketch featuring a Police, Random Testing Unit, road stop and a driver who is stopped to be tested. The finished animation will run for around 3 minutes.

Bat Storm.  I've reviewed Muvizu before and recommended it to friends as a low cost entry point to 3D, drag'n'drop, animation. It's very much like a simplified version of Reallusion's iClone6 and, at just over AU$50.00 for the full licensed version, which includes commercial use, hard to pass up. As easy to use as Muvizu is, it can also grow with you as your skills improve. As you get more familiar with the software you'll discover just how customizable everything is.