Animation and Video Life

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.

TET. Mobile Phone Sketch. There was a time when I would sit in front of the TV on an evening, sketch book in my lap, doodling away turning lines and shapes into all manner of characters and quite a few dragons too. With the rise of social media and advances in mobile phone technology my sketch pad has been replaced with Facebook, email and other social app checking. So my lack of creativity is basically your collective fault for distracting me with Likes, comments and other blips of information that really don't need to be checked every few minutes... well not really. I could just put away my phone and pick up a sketchbook again but...

Jump Fail Animation The only way to get better at animation is to actually do some. I figure I can't keep sitting around waiting for time to complete full projects. So the other day I fired up iClone6, after having watched an iClone tutorial on creating action scenes, to try and create a short action sequence of my own.

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.

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...

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.

Plotagon TET Avatar. Plotagon , the free, type an animation app for PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone, has undergone a complete transformation since I last reviewed it in this blog . Gone are the more realistically stylised 3D characters and scenes in favour of a more friendly, 3D cartoon style. It's a style I really like so it prompted me to see what's new in Plotagon version 2. Note that I'm using the PC desktop app so this review pertains to that specifically.