Animation and Video Life

I'm increasingly fascinated by how artificial intelligence systems are being incorporated into more creative applications like visual effects, A.I. generated art, and particularly the development of human sounding voices that can interpret dialogue with more human intonation. Tokkingheads , by Rosebud AI is an interesting application available as a mobile app in both Apple and Play stores, as well as a browser based desktop version.  The simple premise is to upload a headshot image of any person (or use one of theirs), record yourself speaking anything, and then the A.I. will work out how to animate your image saying those words. There's the additional option of filming yourself speaking those words (or you can use one of their videos) and the A.I. will add the movement of your head and face into the mix to 'puppet' your image. The final animation is kind of like a budget light, deep fake video, except this was created in seconds and is relatively impressive with the ...

Long before I became a Reallusion Certified Trainer I had this idea to create a course to teach the basics of Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 studio to people who have never used the application before. While there are a few other courses out there, and literally hundreds of free video tutorials at this point, it's all very confusing for newcomers who just want to animate their epic animated feature film with the least amount of effort actually learning how to make animation. That's where my new website, The Lazy Animator , comes in. Why The Lazy Animator? In this instance 'lazy' is a good thing that's very in line with Reallusion's mandate of developing applications to create more animation with less time and effort. The Lazy Animator website is all about helping you unlock the complexities of animation by walking you through the easy steps that get you to epic greatness quicker. Why do I think I can help you to greatness quicker? The answer is, I'm ...

Dr. Metal and Mr. Robotix. Starting up a one person, independent animation studio, creating an original series, seems like a daunting task but this article's featured animator, Ray Hohnecker, shows that if you just keep the animation simple, and focus on story, you can still create something extremely engaging that keeps viewers coming back for more. Originally Ray sent me the fifth (and latest) episode of his animated series, The Adventures of Dr. Metal and Mr. Robotix . I was so interested in the premise and humor that I went back to the first episode to see how things began, enjoying that episode so much, I watched the next, and the next.  All you really need to know is that Dr. Metal is an evil genius and inventor plotting world domination.  Watch episode one below. If you enjoyed the humor as much as I did you'll want to view further episodes right now. The full playlist  is on Ray's Manta Team Studios Channel on YouTube. To find out more about Ray, Manta Team Studi...

Preparing images for animation with Photoshop Express. If you're like me, when you hear the name Adobe, you immediately start thinking about cheaper, non subscription based, alternative software. Regardless of how you feel about Adobe subscriptions, there's no denying their actual software is really good. Particularly Photoshop which is as much a verb as it is a photo editing/artist tool. Adobe Photoshop Express is a free, cloud based photo editor, that gathers together a select few of Photoshop's most useful photo editing features for you to use as much as you like. You will have to sign up for a free Adobe Account to unlock all of its features but you will not be billed for anything or be funnelled into any kind of paid plan. You'll just see the occasional Adobe ad as you use Photoshop Express. [Note: The web based version of this app no longer exists and has been replace with a free mobile app version with similar capabilities. Click here for more information ]. Th...

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. ...

I was looking around online for an app that can 'cartoonify' a photo of a person, kind of hoping for a 'one click' solution. There are a few out there but none worth highlighting. Then I came across a video tutorial by Pixivu for Cartoonifying faces in Photoshop and wondered if I could do something similar in the free, open source drawing app, Krita ? While Krita isn't quite as elegant as Photoshop it does have some comparable features that make it very easy to create cartoon caricature faces from photos that you could use as illustrations or in your animations. They're particularly useful for using as Morph Based character heads in Cartoon Animator 4 (as shown below). Example Caricature Faces use as morph character heads in Cartoon Animator 4. While the actual steps to create heads like those shown above (and, yes, that character on the right is based on a photo of me that I snapped on my webcam) is not something you're just going to stumble across yourse...

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap...