Animation and Video Life

I will create an animated cartoon caricature from your photo that says your message. View Gig on Fiverr . Creating a side hustle business from your animation skills does not have to be as complicated or time consuming as you may think. Which is ideal if you just want to earn a little money to pay your bills while you create your epic, animated, independent, feature film with the rest of your time. Fiverr Makes Side Hustles Easy Fiverr , the online marketplace for paid 'gigs', makes it easy to create a side hustle without the need for a built in audience or social media community. People specifically go to the site to search for low cost services that solve a need. All you have to do is stand out when people search for your specific skills. Joining Fiverr is free as both a buyer or seller. Becoming a seller is a little more involved as it's a little like filling out a job application with information from your resume. Nothing too difficult though, and don't worry if you ...

Bat Storm, Day Job by TET. This month Reallusion launched its iClone Lip-Sync Animation Contest in which animators are asked to make a 30 second iClone animation created using one or more of iClone's lip-syncing and facial animation tools or plugins. This includes; AccuLips , ExPlus , Facial Mocap , and even the new iClone plugin for Replica's AI TSS voice system . If you'd like to enter you still have plenty of time as submissions close on September 30, 2021. The total prize pool is valued at over USD$40,000 with first prize being $3000 in cash. If you don't have iClone , but are interested in giving 3D animation a try, you can download free 30 day trials of iClone 7 , Character Creator 3 , 3DXChange 7 , and Unreal Live Link , which can all be accessed from the competition site . There's also 50% discount for perpetual licenses if you do decide to purchase any (and I do highly recommend - and use - iClone 7 and Character Creator 3 as two of the easiest 3D animatio...

SVGator is capable of very advanced  vector images and animations. Vector graphics are becoming increasingly more popular as more and more artists and designers become aware of their resolution independence. That is, you can scale a vector image to any size and it will retain its sharpness, never pixelate, and retain its file size. SVG (scalable vector graphic) is a cross platform, standard vector file format that most modern web browsers are capable of displaying. If you want to get started in SVG graphics the free vector drawing app, Inkscape , saves images in this format natively (i.e. by default). However, if you've wanted to create animated vector graphics with user interactivity (or even just animated only) for the web, the go to tool was Adobe Flash (which is now Animate CC), and not much else. SVGator is changing all that with their cloud based, vector animation studio. Initially launched in 2017, SVGator evolved to version 2.0 in 2019 with a complete overhaul that is very...

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...