Zlogspot - animationandvideo

Skateboarding Cage Monster by TET. Around the beginning of December 2018 I started work on a new CrazyTalk Animator 3 , G3 character of my own original design. Known as 'The Cage Monster' readers of my TET Life blog may recognize him as the Skatepark mascot for the long since closed Cage Skatepark . I didn't document the creation process in this blog, as I've done with other characters in the past, as I didn't want to start yet another series on a new character that I may or may not complete. At this stage I have completed a full G3 'side' view character rig which I managed to finish faster than usual because I could simply copy and paste all the hands and facial features from my G3 color monkey characters (that this character was derived from and which you can purchase in my Reallusion Marketplace store ). The Cage Monster will become available in my store when I've completed a front view character rig and his fully animated skateboard prop. The skate...

The Dork Knight was one of the very first animations I created in 2008 on the then very new GoAnimate (now known as Vyond ) website and animation studio. At the time it was featured as a Staff Pick and spawned two 'sequel' animated shorts. A very loose parody of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dork Knight reimagines Bruce Wayne as a preteen nerd who thinks he can be a superhero. This version of the character is rich enough to have a butler (Alfred) but lives a more suburban lifestyle with his 'Batcave' being his mother's garage. Anyway, to cut a long story short, over the years I've bought probably thousands of dollars of CrazyTalk Animator content packs that I've barely used. I really want to do more animation that doesn't take months to complete and is just made for the fun of telling a story. Remaking my old GoAnimation shorts is something for years I thought would be a fun challenge so I finally decided to give it a shot. Rather than use ...

This chicken really turned heads at the end of Reallusion's WIP 1 Video. Reallusion recently announced the next iteration of their 2D Animation studio, CrazyTalk Animator 3 , by unveiling a new name and a work in progress page on their website showcasing some of the new features. Now known as Cartoon Animator 4 , the new name signifies that CrazyTalk Animator has grown far beyond giving bodies to the morph based heads in CrazyTalk  and evolved into, as their tagline states, the one-for-all 2D animation software. CrazyTalk Animator 3 was such a leap forward, and has had so many new features added through periodical updates, that you might wonder if there was anything left to implement that would wow users. But Reallusion has managed to do just that. Some of the features revealed, which are explained in more detail, with video, on their WIP 1 page , include: Motion Enhancement Auto IK Rig Smart IK System Motion Retargeting Custom UI Rig Smooth Head Turn 360 Degree Head Turn G4 360 H...

Mr Bowlsacc by Francesco Tammaccaro As promised in my post showcasing my own entry into Reallusion's Animation@Work Competition for 2018, this is my post letting you know the winners have been announced . This time my entry didn't even manage a special mention, unlike my entry from four years ago that won a Best Animation award in its category despite being shorter, taking less time to make, and featuring far less technical skill and actual animation, than my current entry. The fact is, in four years, awareness of CrazyTalk Animator, and the number of people who've become proficient with it has grown to a more competitive field. Demonstrated by the overall winner from 2014's competition , Garry Pye, coming in at third place with an animation that is easily streets ahead of his work with CTA from four years ago. Overall that's a good thing for Reallusion, CTA, and the CTA community. Especially CTA content creators interested in building a viable business in the Re...

Reallusion is running its Animation@Work Competition again. I've been away, not writing blog posts, so I could focus entirely on getting my entry done. Now that it's finished, this post I'm going to run through the creation of my entry and highlight some of the techniques I used to create it. As per 2014's competition I'm entering the Business Animation section of the competition, presumably playing to my strengths, and allowing me to create an animation entirely from pre-existing content store library elements. This category is judged mainly on story, story tempo, sound design and animation skill. There is a preference for significantly modified content store characters but it's not an essential requirement (which is where my entry is at its weakest - none of my characters are modified at all from their base character). My goal was to create my entry as quickly as possible. Reallusion has always promoted CrazyTalk Animator as a fast animation workflow and I wan...

Reallusion's Animation@Work competition is back after a four year hiatus in which time CrazyTalk Animator has grown from version 2 to 3 with features making it easier to use, more time saving, and more powerful than ever for 2D animation. Create an animation with CrazyTalk Animator 3 and enter it into the competition for a chance to win up to US$2000.00. CrazyTalk Animator 3 literally caters to all skill levels of 2D animator from the complete beginner with no drawing skills whatsoever to the power user who loves nothing better than to bring their own original artwork to life with the least amount of effort. The focus of the Animation@Work competition is creating animations for a work/professional environment but that doesn't mean hobby animators can't enter. The idea is to showcase how CrazyTalk Animator 3 can be used in specific work situations. There are three categories; Business Animation The most obvious use of animation in a work environment, business explainer vi...

Scene 2 from my storyboard, Infinite Monkeys. Work on my Infinite Monkey animated short is definitely back on track since my last update and my previous part 4 post . To get things moving again I've decided not to spend time creating a final draft storyboard that uses all the actual props and characters. This is something that you'd generally do if you were planning to show the storyboard to someone else for feedback. At this point I'm not planning to do that so I'm going bypass it and create and animate each scene as I go, saving a bit of time. The next stumbling block was scene 2 of my storyboard (pictured above). Initially I thought I was going to have to design, draw and animate a whole new monkey character just for this scene. I wasn't really into doing that, then I remembered my existing Reddy the color monkey character has a three quarter view puppet rig that would be ideal, plus there's no reason why I can't use multiples of Reddy since, typically, ...

Work on my Infinite Monkey Theorem, animated short has mostly stalled in the last few weeks. Readers of my other blog will know I've been struggling with a neck injury (sometimes referred to as 'Computer Neck') that has made doing any kind of lengthy computer work a literal pain in the neck. I'm getting through it but, if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, I highly recommend you take five minute breaks, at least every 30 minutes, to walk around and do some neck stretching exercises. Anyway, to get this project back on track, I'm trying something a little new to create my video diary of my latest work. Recently I purchased a new Logitech HD webcam (my old webcam was a pre HD relic) which I've teamed with OBS studio , a free application staple, used by live streamers everywhere. OBS Studio allows you to not just stream but also record to a single video file, multiple video/audio sources into a single production. Kind of like a TV studio recording a ...

Top Down Typewriter Prop by TET. As far as my Infinite Monkey Theorem animated short goes, I think I'm just going to have to stop stating what I hope to complete by the next post and just be happy with the fact that I've completed something, and that the project is progressing. Last post I was hoping to have the entire final draft of my polished storyboard finished this week but instead, all I've managed is to create a top down view of my typewriter prop. Not that the prop is a straight forward drawing of a typewriter. It has been created in layers so that various parts can be easily animated in the final short - but still, I thought I'd manage more. There's not much to explain. It's a similar process to how I created the character for scene one of the storyboard so sit back and watch the short video below if you really want to see the creation of this prop from start to finish. Note that this typewriter prop may end up in my Reallusion Market Place store once...

Final character art, scene one. Continuing to work on my Infinite Monkey Theorem animated short , I had hoped to have finished the entire final draft storyboard by now. However the holiday season being what it is, I didn't get as much time to work on it as I had hoped. Despite that I can show you the entire process of me taking the character (loosely based on myself) in the opening panel of the storyboard, from rough sketch to the final artwork that I'll use in the animation. Obviously the main image at the top of this post shows the final character so, just to remind you of how the character started out, below is the rough sketch version. The original rough sketch. The basic steps I followed to create the final version was: Import the rough sketch into Clip Studio Paint. Sketch a more refined version of the character. Trace the outlines onto a vector layer for easier line work editing. Break up the body parts into their own layers. Add raster layers to add all the coloring. Po...

Infinite Monkey Theorem. Back in my last Project Update post I mentioned my Infinite Monkey Theorem, Animated Short that I had begun working on that was designed to showcase, Reddy, my first color monkey character for CrazyTalk Animator 3. Up until recently I had been working a little bit on the project every weekday, however the project fell by the wayside in an effort to get my Mar-Rey Sue, Desert Scavenger finished by the end of November. Now that character is finished, I think it's time to get this animated short back into my work schedule. As mentioned in the previous project update the animated short is a simple joke based around Infinite Monkey Theorem - the idea that, if you placed an infinite number of monkeys in a room, with an infinite number of typewriters, they would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The project has been fully storyboarded for some time. When I put the project on hold I was in the middle of refining the storyboard from rough sket...

Mar-Rey Sue - Ideal for your next 'Force Awakens/Last Jedi' parody. Desert Scavenger, Mar-Rey Sue, is now available to buy in my Reallusion Marketplace store for your next CrazyTalk Animator 3 Star Wars parody (or any desert based animation really). The character is a single side angle, G3 character that comes with a range of options and accessories. Features include: Two Face Sprites - Remove Mar-Rey's goggles and head scarf to reveal her hair.   Robe Accessory (Optional) - Add Mar-Rey's free flowing lower robe to your animation for extra impressive animated detail (entirely optional. She still looks great if you don't include her robes). This accessory is a six boned spine actor that works well with 'waving in the wind' motions for spine actors - or manually key frame its animation yourself. Link the robe to the character's upper thigh bone and it will move with her automatically. All you have to do is animate how it reacts to her movement.   Quarter ...

CTA3 Bone Editor Preview. If you've been following my posts on creating my CrazyTalk Animator 3, G3, Desert Scavenger Character, Mar-Rey Sue (note the revised spelling of 'Mar-Rey' from 'Ma-Rey'), then I hope you'll be excited to learn the main character rig is finished. That's right, all of the sprites are complete, the bone guides are in place, and I've imported the character into CrazyTalk Animator 3. Naturally the first import attempt was not perfect. There was quite a few adjustments to be made to the character template to get things working well. Also of note is that if you misspell a folder name in the template it can result in parts of the character not being imported into CTA3 at all. In my case, all the sprites for the character's right eye didn't import on the first attempt because I accidentally spelt 'right' with two 't's on the template folder. Second attempt, I fixed all the issues I discovered on the first. I'...

Ma-Rey Sue - Now with 100% less head scarves and googles. Work continues on my Desert Scavenger, Star Wars parody character, Ma-Rey Sue. Last post I gave you the character's development background and current status. This week, I've continued to work on her and made some real progress. Much of my time in her development these last couple of weeks was taken up with creating the character's hand sprites. Each hand has 24 different sprites to give you a range of pose options. Even though I was adapting the same hands I used with my color monkeys to work with Rey, the process was still quite time consuming. Robes Detail. Fortunately the hands are now finished. This week I've been working on her robes that flow around her hip and upper thigh. My goal is to give the animator two options, 1.) To animate the character with simple robes that are part of the upper thigh sprites, 2.) To include an optional character spine accessory of the robe that can be animated blowing in the w...

Since I hadn't talked about my upcoming CrazyTalk Animator 3, G3, Desert Scavenger Character, in any great detail (and because finishing her is taking longer than anticipated) I thought you may be interested to look at the project in a little more detail. The Beginning Back in March of 2016 I had this idea to create a Star Wars, The Force Awakens, parody animated short. Seeing the little ball droid, BB-8 roll around at speed through the desert reminded me so much of the old WB Road Runner cartoons. Since everyone was out looking for BB-8 and Rey was doing her best to make sure he didn't get caught, I thought that could be done in a humorous, Road Runner style parody. Character Design With that thought in mind I gathered together a few images of Rey and set to work creating a character that kind of looked like her but getting an actual likeness wasn't critical. I just wanted to create an original looking character that would suit the humor I was going for. Character developm...

TET - Bitstrips Avatar. I'm really great at starting projects and, because of that, a lot of projects end up on the back burner or forgotten about entirely. So as not to allow that to happen, I thought it was time for a complete update on all the animation projects I've started in recent years (yes, I said years ) and have still to finish or discontinue. I'll work backwards from newest to oldest. New Projects These projects I've not mentioned in this blog before or have briefly mentioned in passing. CrazyTalk Animator 3, G3, Desert Scavenger Character, and Animated Short Desert Scavenger, 'Ma-Rey Sue'. I briefly mentioned that I was putting together an animated parody short featuring Rey from The Force Awakens that was based upon the style of old Road Runner cartoons. I have a partially complete script and storyboard for the project so there's still a chance this will get made. What is more certain is that the Rey character rig (who I'm naming 'Ma-R...