CrazyTalk Animator 2 Pro
Can this animation software bring your cartoons to life?
$180 (about £107) Developer Reallusion, reallusion.com OS OS X 10.7 or later Requires 3-button mouse or touch panel, Dual core CPU or higher
As its name suggests, CrazyTalk Animator 2 Pro began life as a piece of software that synchronises recorded audio to a character’s mouth, and this still forms a big part of it. It works well enough, recognising our ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ sounds and translating them into the requisite mouth shapes.
CrazyTalk is designed primarily for 2D animations, but there are a few faux-3D options. The character models include 10 different perspectives, but you have to set their direction at the start of each sequence; it would be far better if they aligned themselves automatically. It also includes more advanced features such as HumanIK animation and puppeteering adjustment. Annoyingly, the Mac version misses some key features such as chromakey greenscreening and video imports. A more crucial omission is that you can’t export to any format other than MOV, while PC users get Flash and MP4.
These restrictions make us reluctant to pay the high asking price – we’d prefer it if it was about half that. It functions as a quick and dirty way to create 2D animations but we prefer the more in-depth approach of Smith Micro’s Anime Studio. Henry Winchester An easy-to-use piece of animation software, but the Mac version lacks some important features.
Easy to use
Clever lip syncing
Character movement flaws
Limited features on Mac