Animation and Video Life

Eleven Labs launches their AI Music Generator. S ound effects, music, and in particular getting voice actors can be tricky to source as a solo creator, or even as part of a small team, but Eleven Labs , the gold standard in AI voice generation, can now be your go to tool for all three. AI Voices You probably already knew that Eleven Labs is arguably the best generative AI site for realistic, expressive text to speech, voice cloning, and voice changing, with an entire library of voices, in multiple languages to draw upon as well.  I've personally used their tools to clone my own voice to near perfection, which you can sample in this post, Creating an AI Digital Avatar and Voice Clone of Myself with Free and Low Cost AI Tools .  I also use their library of text to speech voices in my animation demonstrations, such as when I used them in my animation demonstrating,  The Family Guy Method - Animating Talking Hand Gestures in Cartoon Animator AI Text to Sound Effect Eleven ...

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...

A scene from Christmas List a short by TET. I released my end of year holiday short,  Resident Dragon: Christmas List , staring my avatar, TET, Red the Dragon, Cool Froyd the Cat, and Grrr Dog. You will be seeing more of these original characters in the future as I'm developing a six part series . Watch the holiday short below. Since it's been a while since I've done a behind the scenes deep dive into one of my own productions, I thought this animated short would be ideal to share some of my takeaways for what I learned or did that I think may help you in your own animated projects. Resident Dragon: Christmas List was completed over the space of around three weeks, working mostly a couple of hours in the evenings, then maybe 4-5 hours over the weekends. Here are my thoughts on the process. Writing the Script Excerpt from one of  AI Storywriter's Generations. I've been experimenting a lot with AI for writing scripts and I've come to the conclusion AI doesn't...

Once you start getting into character animation you learn pretty quickly that people don't just speak with their mouths. Hand gestures and movements play a pretty important part of how people communicate too. The problem is, animating hand gestures and movements is extremely time consuming... and who knows what gestures and movements should be used and when? In Reallusion's Cartoon Animator I use pre-animated talking character motions that I chop and move gestures around so the arm and hand movements 'feel' right based on my own understanding of body language (and I also act out dialogue to get a sense of what arm and hand movements I might make with what's being spoken). Recently I came across a video by the creator of Culpamland Extra , an online animated series, in which they briefly outlined how they animate talking using the Family Guy Method. I'd never heard of this, and if you try to search for it online you'll be hard pressed to find anything. So I...

Most of us are not talented enough to perform verbal gymnastics with our voices, easily imitating people of different ages, genders, races etc. Which is real problem for solo animators with little to no budget. How do you voice multiple characters in your animations? Developments in human sounding, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Text to Speech (TTS) voices is making them an increasingly viable and affordable alternative to hiring real actors (or convincing family or friends to help out). Murf.AI is an extremely impressive online, AI voice generation service that sounds like real people. Not just a TTS service, their online studio offers a range of tools that include editing and adding AI voices to entire video projects, converting your own recorded audio to an AI voice, and uploading scripts to be converted into AI voices, and more. A selection of the 120+ available voices. Within Murf's studio you get up to 120+ AI voices in 20+ languages, as well as a library of royalty free musi...

Replica A.I. Voices are great for in game character voices. I first trialed Replica Studios A.I. Voice Actor Text To Speech (TTS) voices shortly after they launched about a year ago and was suitably impressed by how natural they sounded. Some voices better than others but most sounding very close to human with the right inflections at the appropriate moments. Since then they have been working on improvements and adding more voices to their voice cast library. I have used Replica Studios on projects in the past, most notably on my 2021 Reallusion, Lip Sync Contest entry featuring my character, Bat Storm.  Mia and the Tourist. This time I've decided to use Replica to cast the other two voices in my upcoming Mia and the Tourist animated short that I've been blogging the process of creating through demonstrating the apps I'm using to make it. So far I've covered scriptwriting , storyboarding , background creation , and character rigging . When I say the other two voices ...

Replica Studios TTS App. Image: Replica Studios It really pays to attend Reallusion's free animation demonstration Webinars. At a recent webinar, host, Kai DeNeve, featured Replica Studio's A.I. Voice Actor system . Replica uses Artificial Intelligence to learn a real voice actor's speech patterns, tone, and inflection, which can then be used with their Text To Speech (TTS) system to produce the most realistic computer generated voices yet (or at least that I've come across). You can even fine tune how individual words are said and more. Their TTS system works through a downloadable desktop app for Mac and Windows. There are also bridging apps if you want to use their system for voices in UnReal and Unity Gaming systems. Sign up for a free account and get 30 minutes of free voice downloads (that's 30 minutes of recorded audio - not 30 minutes to download audio - that you can download a line at a time). After that you can purchase 4 hour blocks for just USD$24.00. ...

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.

The modern day mobile phone is often referred to as the 'smart' phone. At the top of the list is the iphone with Android handsets becoming increasingly more popular. But are they really smart? Let's listen in on a random conversation in the video below. Smart Phones - Lost by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! This animation features one of the quick templates in GoAnimates latest Type a Video theme, Talking Picz. The theme is a departure for GoAnimate as it uses templates and talking faces unique to the theme i.e. you can't access any of the backgrounds or faces in the GoAnimate Studio. I'm still not a big fan of the Type a Video themes. No matter what I make I can always see how I could improve it if I could just edit it myself and add my own custom sounds, voices etc. However, as I've said previously, they are a great way to get down a quick idea for a bit of fun - such as I have done in the video above. G...

It was a long time coming and a whole lot of thinking time too but Episode 1, Part 4 of Bat Storm: Financial Crisis is finally here. This is the exciting conclusion. Of course, if you haven't seen Episode 1, Part 1 , Part 2 or Part 3 , clicking those links will take you to their respective blog posts where you'll find that episode. In this final part, Bat Storm and Bat Flash follow the clues and close in on their man. With the reward money for the safe return of the missing girls back in their sights it seems financial prosperity will soon be theirs... or will it? Ep 1 / Pt 4 Bat Storm: Financial Crisis by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Part of the reason it took so long for me to make this fourth installment was finding a 'family friendly' motivation for James (a.k.a. the Jokester's employee Jokester). I didn't want this episode to go down that dark path where the two girls got hurt in any way so I came ...

 GoAnimate, MJ's Gay Lobster Arm by Cut Paste Anime I don't wish to harp on about a subject having already been accussed of PR speak for GoAnimate but now the issue of Harry Partridge Snubs GoAnimate is over being a hot topic I felt a review of would give me some closure. So here is what I've observed from the whole she bang. Harry Partridge is an awesome animator. I've seen Harry's work long before his jab at GoAnimate . I wouldn't class him as one of my heroes but he definitely knows his craft. He does some fun animations and has a great sense of humor.    The majority of people who commented in support of Harry's GoAnimate Video on Newgrounds , Cartoon Brew and especially on Youtube really had no idea what GoAnimate is or what it can do yet they felt they had enough knowledge to call people who use GoAnimate 'lazy', 'untalented' and ignorant of what professional animators actually do to make cartoons. Not to mention all th...

Office space is a series I started on DIY animation site, Xtranormal , featuring two office workers, Steve and Vicki. Steve is a Waste Management Executive on the rise and Vicki is his some what jaded personal assistant. You can see episode 1 and 2 on my original Xtranormal post . Episode 3 picks up just after Steve has presented his report to the Top Brass. He confronts Vicki with a number of issues... Episode 4 (below) is the latest episode which I've entered into Xtranormal's first animation contest . The theme is relationships in celebration of Valentine's Day. There is a US$1000.00 dollar prize for the entry with the most views on Xtranormal's Youtube channel. The competition ends February 28th, 2011 so please help me out by sharing this animation as far and wide as you can. In this episode Steve has another chance to present his report but Vicki is some what distracted from getting the job done. This one is a little more racier than previous episodes so pa...

Anyone who has followed Batman in the comics will know that my title 'Financial Crisis' for episode one of Bat Storm is a kind of play on words of the 'Final Crisis' DC series of comics. However from there, beyond the obvious parody of Batman himself, Bat Storm doesn't draw much from the Dark Knight's legend. Bat Storm is a single dad, working class superhero fighting crime with his superhero daughter Bat Flash. Funding their crime fighting through children's party appearances. In episode one, part one, money becomes tight when two REAL superheroes and a clown muscle in on their turf. Ep 1/ Pt 1 Bat Storm: Financial Crisis by etourist on GoAnimate The idea for Bat Storm's series began with the Will Smith superhero movie Hancock . One of that movie's key themes was the destruction created by Hancock whilst carrying out his business of fighting crime. Who actually pays for all that collateral damage? This question makes you look at films like...

Xtranormal is an animation site that claims if you can type, you can make movies . It's a bold claim but it certainly delivers with its online 'text to movie' animation studio. I would liken the experience to writing a twitter conversation where the status update box is shaped like a speech balloon. You simply select which character is speaking, write their dialog in the balloon, then add the next speech balloon to the list for the next (or even the same character) to say something. In fact if you keep log files of your various online conversations you could use Xtranormal to turn them into movies. Once you've entered all your dialog, click the preview button and you can see your animation come to life using fairly detailed 3D characters and sets. All the camera angles will be automatically selected and I have to say the automated camera works pretty well. The shots it chooses do make your animation look like a professional movie. It's not always perfect bu...