Animation and Video Life

PixVerse's Show Muscle Effect is a real flex for other AI generative video sites. AI  generated digital avatars have improved greatly over the last 12 months, to the point where you can replace yourself with a digital, talking head, clone avatar that can say anything using your AI generated voice clone, and casual viewers wouldn't even notice. I tried cloning myself back in July of 2024 in my post,  Creating an AI Digital Avatar and Voice Clone of Myself with Free and Low Cost AI Tools . Since then, I've seen human clone channels on YouTube that I'd never guess in passing were digital humans. This is one of Hedra's better generations of video using my TET Avatar as a source. One area that has been slower to catch up is using AI to create 2D cartoon style avatars, from very specific character designs, that don't have realistic human proportions. I put my TET Avatar through Hedra , one of the best talking head avatar generators currently available, and got a compl...

Adam West's Bat suit was also a very advanced fabric able to deflect machine gun fire. Anyone who has followed my work for a long time will know that Batman is my favorite comic book superhero. That's why my character Bat Storm is modelled after Batman and not any other hero. Less known is that Adam West, more than any other live action Batman, is 'my Batman' or at least the Batman of my childhood self. That's not to say I don't like other versions, I very much do, but Adam's Batman is the one that made me a life long fan - because I've never really read Batman comics. To this day I'll fight you on the best Batmobile being the 66 TV series version (including if you put it against every iteration from the comic books). So when the YouTube channel and VFX studio, Corridor Crew came up in my suggested videos with their The Batman Trailer, but with Goofy Batman , I was there.  Watch the finished, stand alone trailer below. It's my new, favorite Bat...

Bat Flash and Bat Storm. Coplay Superheroes who fight crime. Bat Storm and his Daughter, Bat Flash, cosplay for children's parties and other events by day and moonlight as crime fighters by night... well, not all night, obviously... they still try to get their six hours of sleep. The all new, 3D, iClone animated, reboot of my popular GoAnimate series is coming. Below is my second teaser trailer after my Robert Pattinson Suit Test parody trailer. This second trailer is a scene for scene remake of the original first trailer created for GoAnimate more than ten years ago. If you like what you see here and want to help me develop Bat Storm into an ongoing animated web series check out my Patreon which helps to cover the cost of voice actors and other production costs. Huge thanks to Barrie McDermid for voicing all the characters on this one. Check out his website for his voice work and other creative services at: Ask Barrie  https://www.askbarrie.co.uk/ Behind the Scenes Usually I...

Bat Storm in front of the camera. iClone 7. I'm very much a novice when it comes to 3D animation in iClone 7 . However I can find my way around the application because the user interface and workflow shares a lot of similarities with Cartoon Animator 4 (also made by Reallusion). For that reason alone, if you're proficient with Cartoon Animator 4 (formerly known as CrazyTalk Animator 3) and want to try 3D character animation, iClone 7 will not seem too unfamiliar. You may even be able to pick up the basics in under an hour. With that in mind I thought I'd do a break down of how my Bat Storm Suit Camera Test , animated short was made. Not a step by step guide but just a look at the features I used, to highlight just how easy iClone 7 is to get started with. You're already part way there if you have a firm grasp of the X, Y, and Z planes for positioning characters and props in CA4. Bat Storm Character Rig Bat Storm. I'm not going to claim this part ...

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...

The Dork Knight was one of the very first animations I created in 2008 on the then very new GoAnimate (now known as Vyond ) website and animation studio. At the time it was featured as a Staff Pick and spawned two 'sequel' animated shorts. A very loose parody of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dork Knight reimagines Bruce Wayne as a preteen nerd who thinks he can be a superhero. This version of the character is rich enough to have a butler (Alfred) but lives a more suburban lifestyle with his 'Batcave' being his mother's garage. Anyway, to cut a long story short, over the years I've bought probably thousands of dollars of CrazyTalk Animator content packs that I've barely used. I really want to do more animation that doesn't take months to complete and is just made for the fun of telling a story. Remaking my old GoAnimation shorts is something for years I thought would be a fun challenge so I finally decided to give it a shot. Rather t...

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.

I recently teased the above Bat Storm image on my Facebook wall stating that it was a future iClone project that I hoped to work on. The image is just a fun test that I put together, in the space of about an hour or so of tinkering, after purchasing a bunch of Superhero content through the Reallusion Content Store and Market Place . Because the image looks cartoonish you could be forgiven for thinking it's something I drew myself. If you're not familiar with iClone and 3D animation techniques in general I thought I'd draw back the curtain a little and show you how this image was made.

GoHobbyist Forums Over the last couple of years GoAnimate has evolved from a site for animation enthusiasts who just want to get their ideas animated quickly to a site for businesses of all sizes who want to engage customers through animated video. As a result the GoAnimate 'hobbyist' community was slowly displaced as more and more community features were removed from the website. The final nail in the coffin was the removal of the old discussion forum at the end of 2014. A forum that had served the community since the site began in 2008.

Cartoon Network released their first full trailer for the new CG animated series Beware the Batman and, although I'm a long time Batman fan - particularly animated and on film - it just didn't get me excited for the show. It's not that I think the trailer is bad or that the show looks like it's missed the mark on what makes Batman great it just that it's all CG animated and, for some reason, I find that disappointing. Which is really odd because this show is following in the footsteps of the Green Lantern CG animated series . Although I didn't watch much of Green Lantern, the episodes I happened to catch were really great, and I did like the design of the show. So much so that I have considered buying the series on Blu-ray or DVD - and I'm not that much of a Green Lantern fan. My problem is I can't get excited for CG animation anymore. Which is a shame because at one time CG animation was something I really wanted to do myself. Still do, in ...

The character of Super Kent was one of my first creations on GoAnimate way back in 2008, not long after joining the site. The basic premise of the character is that he is a parody of Clarke Kent with the sole purpose of trying to convince his boss at the Daily Planet that he really IS Superman. Previously I created two comedy shorts, Super Kent and Super Kent Returns , both with the same format of Kent initially trying to convince his boss of his super powers without success. The boss then sends him to report on a breaking news story. It wasn't a character I had any plans to return to any time soon as I felt I'd moved on from my early GoAnimate superhero parodies. However TotallyEpicHD , the winner of my April TET Blog Contest, resurrected the character in his entry to my contest. Which inspired GoAnimator, gipsy, to make a flash version of Super Kent in his Super Suit. When I came across his post in GoAnimate's forum's I asked if he could create a flying actio...

It's been approximately two years since I completed Bat Storm, Episode 1: Financial Crisis and finally the first part of Episode 2 is here. Bat Storm, Episode 2: Pain, continues from Episode 1. Super Charge is still undermining Bat Storm's efforts to fight crime and Detective Smith is still unhappy with any Superhero doing police work. Impressed by the Jokester's business model of look-a-like employees Bat Storm has started to expand his party appearance business with new look-a-like employees of his own. Meanwhile the Mayor's office has experienced several attempted break ins by a masked thief and Bat Storm takes it upon himself to apprehend the repeat offender. E2/Pt1 Bat Storm: Pain by etourist on GoAnimate Behind the scenes, I never intended to take this long to release Episode 2. In fact the original intention of the Bat Storm series was to write and release each episode quickly, within weeks of each other, until I had completed a series of six 24...

I realized that over the course of the last year or so I've started a number of projects in this blog and haven't really got back to them so I thought I'd give you an update on where things are at. Bat Storm, Episode 2 Last year I announced I was working on Bat Storm, Episode 2 , with an expected release date of August 2012. Obviously that didn't happen. For various reasons I had to shelve the project. The main one being me becoming some what frustrated with the direction things were going. I think I started to get a little too ambitious and I also didn't like having a script written in advance. I never wrote a script for Episode 1 , the story just evolved organically as I animated it. That's what really held my interest and pushed me to finishing it. I wanted to know how it ended. Recently I've released new Bat Storm, Episode 2 images onto my Facebook page because I've started working on it again. At the time of writing I have a full two min...

Bat Storm meets Pain . This past fortnight I announced that I had begun work on Episode 2 of Bat Storm by releasing two and a half trailers. I say a 'half trailer' because the third one I released was a re-creation of the second one using different software - more on that later. The truth is I actually started work on Bat Storm Episode 2 way back in the second half of 2011 (around September I think). Which is when I made the first few scenes of the first trailer I released last week. Bat Storm Ep2 Coming Soon by etourist on GoAnimate This airport scene was never part of Episode 2 - not even back then. It was just an idea I had which was triggered by the scene in Superman Returns where Superman catches a crashing plane. I had the thought what if Batman had been there in that scene? There's really nothing for him to do. You could suggest that he would use his 'smarts' to tell Superman to save the plane but really, does Superman need Batman to prompt h...