My mission at the moment is to animate my Femmebot’s mouth using a new text to video AI app called Pika 1.0 that allows a mad scientist like me replace the head of x with the head of y.
As I experimented, however, I learned that I could potentially accomplish this goal using Adobe Character Animator, an app I started using a couple years ago for my Career Tias mentoring program, but then eventually dropped because I got busy with client work.
In the past few weeks, thanks to networking on LinkedIn, I think I am officially making progress! Read below to see my process, or watch the video here.
My AU film alum Jonathan Jarrett shared this cute example of Pika 1.0 here on LinkedIn:
So I created an account on Pika 1.0 and created these little Femmebot Frankensteins here:
There are probably other text to video AI apps out there that might do a better job, but I’ve already tried RunwayML and D-ID, which did an OK job, but they don’t sync with my audio.
Good thing my interviewee Isabel Custer connected me with Dave Werner, aka Okay Samurai, an Adobe animation expert! He recommended uploading my Femmebot PSD files to Adobe Puppet Maker, which I could then animate in Adobe Character Animator — which would be awesome, because that’s the software I had started experimenting with during the pandemic.
The sobrinos of Career Tias used the puppet templates to animate their own stories using their own voices and facial expressions. I suppose timing is everything because now we’re finally mashing these instincts into REAL ACTION, which is following this tutorial:
After following the steps, here are the results!
Still rough, but definitely getting closer to the idea I want to execute for Season 3 of Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots on TikTok:
Update on January 30, 2024
Just followed Okay Samurai’s steps to animate Dr. Nutmeg using his Blank.puppet file, which you can find here.
Felt cute, def need to delete…😖 Like…ug… those eyelids when she blinks…!
Tic says he likes that effect. “I actually thought that was cool and creepy,” was his feedback. My husband has an aesthetic I L-O-V-E and there is nothing I love more than collaborating and co-creating with him on art. So Imma just keep heading in that direction…but with some tweaks.
Update on February 6, 2024
OK! Finally making progress on eye-rigging after following another Okay Samurai tutorial here. See the improvements below, but obvi, the floating heads are a bit distracting so I gotta figure out a different set-up. I might copy the format of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.