The Bottom Line
Pros
- Start animating faces within minutes.
- Comes with a full library to start you off.
- Advanced facial recognition tools.
- Upgraded to allow multiple characters.
- New version smooths animation.
Cons
- Requires registration to activate. Do not like.
- UI is a little clunky, but not too bad.
Description
- Use facial recognition, movement, and rotation to add voice and life to still images.
- Create a virtual host or tell animated stories.
- Use the stage to plan and coordinate your scenes.
- Features an animated camera for additional effects.
- Includes the ability to publish direct to YouTube and other social networks.
Guide Review - CrazyTalk 6.0 Pro
CrazyTalk basically lets you take still images of people, whether photographed or illustrated, and define the key points of the image's mouth so the program can warp the image to create the appearance of a moving, talking mouth. It's lip-synching made easy, and in version 4.0 it was a little creepy and surreal. The technology has vastly improved, though, and offers a wider, smoother range of animation options to help dispel the unnerving "deformed talking head" syndrome. Other upgrades include support for multiple talking characters, and Vivid-Eye intelligent cosmetics.
It's extremely easy to use, which you know is always a selling point for me. Definitely a program a novice could pick up and start using within minutes. You can even design and animate your own characters within the program, rather than just importing images. While it's not going to let you produce fully-featured 2D animations a la Disney, it will let you build stories using talking animated characters.
Basically, CrazyTalk is what I call an "EZ Cheez" program. It's cheap, it's fast, it's good, and while it may not be the same experience as fine muenster (such as Flash or Toon Boom), it does what it's supposed to do and does it well.
