Animation and Video Life

Moho Dynamic Bones (left) versus Cartoon Animator Spring Bones (right). It seems fair to say that Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 's main competitor is Lost Marble's Moho Pro . While Moho has generally been ahead on advanced animation features, Cartoon Animator has been closing the gap with each new version. Personally I have licenses for both applications - just recently upgrading my Moho 12 license to 13 because I think there are times when the apps could complement each other in my workflow. With that in mind, I'm well positioned to make comparisons between each application's feature set.  Since Reallusion introduced Spring Bones in CA5 I thought you may be interested to see Moho's equivalent, Dynamic Bones (or vice-versa if Moho is your preferred software). Cartoon Animator 5's Spring Bones Right now almost everyone in the Cartoon Animator community, who have tried the new Spring Bones, are singing their praises - with good reason. Previously, if we wa...

Since I've previously covered how to get the most out of your purchased G3 and G1 characters for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5, it would be remiss of me not to look at the greatest character rig of all time, G2 characters. G2 Characters have been mostly relegated to legacy status since Cartoon Animator 3 but, as a rig that let you create fully 360 degree turn-able characters that moved in 3D space, animated with 3D motion files, and were mostly vector based, there was nothing else like them in any other 2D  software. The problem was, even with the templates provided by Reallusion for both Adobe Flash and Serif DrawPlus , they were complex and time consuming to make from scratch. They were also difficult to customize because there was no way to export and edit individual parts. G2 characters just weren't easy enough for the casual Cartoon Animator user to customize so they fell by the wayside. However they're still fully supported in CA5 with all the same functional...

Long before there were G3-SVG vector characters in Cartoon Animator 5 there was the original vector based G1 characters from the first version of the software, formerly known as CrazyTalk Animator. Interestingly, not only can you still use G1 characters in Cartoon Animator 5, you can also still buy them in both the Reallusion Content Store and the Marketplace . The original Power Tools series for CrazyTalk Animator (now Cartoon Animator) is still available to purchase in the Reallusion Content Store along with many other Legacy packs containing G1 characters as well as vector based Props/Scenes, and Motion files. Note that not all G1 characters are vector based. In general anything that looks more photographic in G1 characters is raster based bitmaps. Most of the more cartoon style characters are flash based vector (SWF) images that are resolution independent. G1 Characters - They're a Bit Different Placing a G1 character on CA5's stage will bring up this G2 conversion window...

If you're serious about producing 2D animation as quickly as possible, while still achieving professional results, Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 makes the most compelling case yet as your animation studio/tool of choice. Cartoon Animator's point of difference has always been its ease of use and accelerated workflow. Creating fast, 2D animation using puppet, bone rigged based characters and props, on a stage with 3D depth for easy scene parallax effects. As it has developed Reallusion has incorporated more advanced features like motion capture for both face and body as well as being able to export scenes to post production tools like After Effects with the addition of plugins. After moving away from Flash based vector image support for a few years, Reallusion is back with full .SVG (scalable vector graphics) support for resolution independent graphics. They've also added Spring Dynamic physics and Full Form Deformation tools, both of which make it ridiculously easy t...

One of the often overlooked strengths of Cartoon Animator is how easy it is to make new characters simply by mixing and matching elements from existing characters you already own. This ability is possible because of the standardized G3 Human template. Note that it is also possible to mix and match G1 and G2 character elements with themselves but, generally you can't mix G1 with G2 elements or G1 and G2 elements with G3 character elements. There are some exceptions but for the least amount of quirks and frustration, I'll be demonstrating mixing and matching G3 character elements only. For best results, mix and match characters elements from the same or similar character range (i.e. those that have the same or similar artwork styles). This will usually help ensure most elements are positioned correctly without the need for too much adjustment. The Simplest Method Want to give a character a new outfit or create another character wearing the same outfit? Just swap heads. As shown i...

If you're more of a blog writer than a video creator but you recognise that video can drive more readers to your blog then Lumen5's relatively simple, AI powered, online video creator may be just what you're looking for. Lumen5 can take a post link or RSS feed from your blog (or you can even just paste text into the editor) and, using AI and a library of premade templates, stock images, and stock video, turn your writing into a video essay complete with sub titles and, royalty free music. Impressively you can try Lumen5 for free, forever, with their Community account. You don't get all the features but you get enough to create some very professional looking videos. Your final video is unobtrusively branded with just a brief end credit scene for Lumen5. Fast Video Creation Below is a video I created based upon a post from my TET.Life blog on Climate Change . Other than the words and a small photo of myself at the end, everything was created and sourced on Lumen5's f...

Are you tempted by the promise of easy to make, animated sketch videos, and perfectly lip synced, customizable, 3D animated Avatars? These days almost everyone is into producing video content. Whether it's to promote a business, teach a course, or just to share your creativity on YouTube and other social media.  Producing great quality videos takes time to learn. It's even more challenging if you either don't want to or just aren't comfortable with being on camera. That's when 'done for you', template style video makers start to look like an attractive solution. Sketch Genius and Avatar Builder are both owned by tech entrepreneurs/marketers, Paul Ponna and Sid Diwar . Both video makers have been marketed on FaceBook as complete video creation solutions you can use for personal and commercial projects for a low, one time, payment. Both video makers offer some quite unique features that seemingly make them worth the low introductory prices. Be warned, buyin...

Her addiction was the feeling of scoring a bargain. Image by Hugging Face Stable Diffusion Demo based on a prompt by David Arandle (TET). Far from being fearful of AI image generators like Dall.e 2 and Stable Diffusion I feel a new skill set is emerging for artists who embrace the technology. Chiefly among those skills is the ability to write 'quality' text inputs, and the ability to curate the best outputs i.e. images, if they are being fed into a bigger project or art piece. Case in point. One of my FB friends shared an article by Jesus Diaz,  AI was made to turn David Bowie songs into surreal music videos , in which YouTuber aidontknow fed the lyrics of Bowie's Space Oddity into Midjourney AI and then curated the resulting images into a video clip for the song (embed below).  While aidontknow says they used minimal changes to the lyrics, such as to clarify characters being spoken about in the song, from my experience you don't get quite that cohesive range of i...