Animate Any Face of Any Photo Using Crazy Talk 7

I am going to show you how you can quickly animate any face of any photo using the animation software called Crazy Talk - a product by Reallusion. For those who have read any of my tutorials here, you know that I usually blog about the GNU Image Manipulation Program referred to as GIMP. But today I will be getting into another software program. This other software program will help you to make your time and effort spent on GIMP well worth it. And, trust me when I say this, it is not an expensive product at all.
The fact if, Crazy Talk 7 is a very user friendly piece of software. When I have an animation project I need done quickly and easily, I, more often than not, use Crazy Talk.

 

Tis the Time of the Year for Ghosts and Goblins

 

Besides Christmas, Halloween is my favorite time of the year. Don't you think? And this is the best time of the year to show off your expertise in graphics and animations. What better way to achieve that than with Crazy Talk 7? For any of your Halloween graphics and animation projects, I think Reallusion does a good job of producing the software to make it happen. I just created one for Youtube that I uploaded today.

 

Let's Get to Work Shall We?

 

First thing, I am using Crazy Talk 7 which is version 7.31. This is just so I'm not being misleading with my tutorial.
So, go ahead and open up the program - if you have already downloaded it (otherwise, it can be downloaded from here). When you first open Crazy Talk, you'll find that there are already a set of actors that come standard with the program.
You have the option to use those or, if not:

1. Proceed to Crazy Talk's main menu and click Create New Actor. This will be the very first item in the menu (the half human silhouette icon).
   
2. Upon opening of the Actor Creator dialogue, select Import Image.
   
3. Find your image you'd like to animate.
   
4. Once you open your image, it will be processed by Crazy Talk. After that, proceed by clicking Next.
   On the next screen, you'll be presented with a set of moveable numbers from 1-4. Drag them to their respective positions. Crazy Talk 7 is pretty self explanatory and does not require a lot of detail in instruction. Once you have the numbers in position, simply click Next.
   
5. On the next screen, you may notice that there are now frames near the nose, eyes, eyebrows, head and mouth. These frames have points that turn green when you hover your mouse over them.
   You want to place these frames around each of the fore mentioned features of the face.
   
6. After that, you'll be taken to the Face Orientation dialogue. The only thing you will need to do here is, click Next. If you'd like to check out your cool work before you save it, you can click the play button in the play back menu. But, if you're ready to proceed to the save file function, just click the Export icon in Crazy Talk's main menu. There, you have a variety of choices to choose from as far as file format, video quality, output size, ect, ect.

GIMP - How to Easily Use the Program

This tutorial was created for people seeking to learn how to easily use the GIMP program. It is the free image manipulation program. This article will teach you the basics of this incredible software.
70 Images Per Week For Only $49.95 An Introduction to the GIMP
GIMP is a type of software program that you can use to manipulate or create images. It stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is the "free" version of the popular program Photo Shop. Users create and submit extras - plugins - such as, textures, patterns, brushes, gradients or palettes. It is for this reason that GIMP is part of the GNU.

For your reference, here are the main features of the GIMP program. So, you can refer back to this illustration if you must. So, let me show you how to easily use the GIMP.

The GIMP is a very easy program to use. The majority of GIMP's tools is self explanatory. Most utilize dialogues along with easy reference of functions. So, let's create your first image. Venture over to GIMP's menu and choose File > New. We're going to use the standard for width & height which is 640px by 400px. Select OK when you are ready. So, we end up with a white box in the preview window (GIMP canvas or image background).

Layers
If there's one thing that you should remember about creating images with GIMP, it's this: get used to the idea of making layers for every element of your image that you create. Layers are your friends. They allow you to be more creative with your images and extend them beyond the average. For every element that you create with GIMP, a table leg, door of a house, person's ear, wheel of a car, ect, ect, you'll want a new layer.
Ok, here we go. Look for the small icons close to the center of the layers dialogue. Click the icon that says "Create a new layer" when your mouse hovers over it.

When the New Layer dialogue window pops open, click OK.

After having created our new layer, we are going to create a shape regularly used. In the Toolbox, you are going to find a variety of useful utilities - tools - that you'll be needing.

Select the "Rectangle Select Tool". After you have clicked the Rectangle Select Tool, if you hover your mouse over GIMP's canvas area, you'll notice that your mouse's icon has changed. You will see an icon resembling a box next to a set of crosshairs. Hold those crosshairs where you would like to start your rectangular shape, then left click and hold your mouse while dragging it to where you'd like the shape to end.

Paint selection - Let's add some color to our shape. Go to the Foreground & background colors box in the Toolbox.

The Foreground & background colors box consists of two boxes. One, more or less, is on top of the other. One is for the background color and the other is for the foreground. The two are interchangeable in that you can select the up & down arrow next to them to replace each other. We just want to paint the foreground. So, lets go ahead and click to open the top box.

Perhaps you own a Wordpress blog or have worked with an HTML editor online. If such is the case, you should be familiar with a color picker. Select your desired color and hit OK. So now, we are going to fill our selection. Go ahead and select the Bucket Fill Tool.

Upon having clicked the Bucket Fill Tool, hover your mouse over the selection in GIMP's canvas and click inside the rectangle - you will notice that the mouse cursor has changed icons and has taken shape of a paint bucket.
I used blue on my selection. Here is how it looks:

This is what we are going to do to save our work: click File > Export from GIMP's main menu. Once the Export Image window has opened, you have tons of save options to choose. File type options include: PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP or even ICO (Windows icon file type format).

Conclusion
I enjoyed creating this tutorial and I hope you enjoyed learning just as much. Like I said before, GIMP is a very easy program to use and it does not take long to learn it. Check out my other website back to top buttons, which is a site about website graphics and art. Give me a shout if you're ever in the neighborhood to say hello or would like some help. I would be more than happy to lend a hand.