CrazyTalk

Creating original 3D talking characters from scratch requires endless hours of work and a great deal of talent. CrazyTalk is a program that can help you put together such a project in just a few minutes.

The software combines facial animation technology with easy utilities designed to bring photos to life. CrazyTalk has a clean interface that’s easy to use.

Thus, as a first step, you must load an image and make a few adjustments to calibrate the animation. You can crop the face, adjust the position of some control points, align the facial wireframe and rotate the mask to fit the head orientation.

Then you can add voice scripts (laughs, growls, hiccups and various phrases), motions (eye-rolls, head movements, blinking, etc.) and backgrounds (blue backdrop, haunted house, night club, sunset, etc.) Extra voices are easy to add to the program, while new motions can be created.

By using a tool called “Face Puppet” you can adjust the muscle movements that match various emotions. As a starting point, the app provides a few profiles, both male and female of various ages.

CrazyTalk also comes with a few projects that you can view before getting to work. These represent characters such as a crazy dentist, a sarcastic cat, an angry wife or a scolded husband.

The bottom line is that CrazyTalk is an interesting tool that provides realistic animation effects. The easy-to-use interface makes the software particularly nice to work with. However, the app wasn’t created with first-time users in mind.