There have been some interesting developments over the past few years to make animation more accessible and easier to carry out more basic tasks. While purists would shudder at the thought of using online software packages such as GoAnimate, they do have their place in the market for people who want to create quick, simple and affordable animated videos.
So who better than Adobe to step into the arena of character animation. After all Adobe software forms the basis of most creative studios in one way or another, I personally live and breath Photoshop as the preferred tool for concept work, and its Adobe themselves who have just announced what could be a real game changer when it comes to producing quick and professional looking animated characters, in the form of 'Adobe Character Animator', an addition to their creative cloud.
Whilst we've yet to get our hands on a copy of this new software (but guess what we’re doing later today!), early signs suggest it has great potential. Adobe Character Animator can be launched from within Adobe After Effects, so we would assume that it’s interface and approaches integrate and follow on from this in some way or another.
In basic terms, you create your artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator, import this into Adobe Character Animator which then allows you to use your camera and microphone to act out your characters facial expressions and voice. It will automatically synchronise with your speech and hand gestures and various movement can be controlled by a combination of pre-programmed behaviours, your mouse and keyboard.
We’re quite excited about it’s potential, especially the notion that we are able to create your own characters rather than rely on ‘stock characters’ which we never do, so this allows us to continue creating unique content but potentially speeds up our workflow, which in turn will give better value to our clients.
We hope to have a good play over the coming days and intend to post more as we learn. Here are some useful links if you want to read more from Adobe themselves and find out more about the Adobe creative cloud.
This video shows some of the potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmPo0_WZyPU#t=249
Not heard of the creative cloud, check it our here: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud.html
Here’s what Adobe have to say on the matter: Adobe Blog
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