Reallusion, an application developer company based in the Silicon Valley, has come up with a fascinating application called Crazy Talk that helps to bring still photos to life. The amazing application was unveiled at a consumer exhibition is San Francisco, with John Martin from the company taking responsibility for explaining how the application works.
Talking Cats How Come?
Even much before the application was formally unveiled, visitors could be seen thronging to what seemed a talking cat on a mobile phone. The cat was in reality a photo of a cat taken using a mobile camera. The Crazy Talk application was loaded onto the mobile phone and caused to image of the cat to act like a puppet. In effect, the user could say anything into the speaker and the image of the cat would be animated as it repeated the words of the speaker.
Animating Still Images
Martin explained how the Crazy Talk application works. He said that the application works with images of faces and other objects too. The software identifies the points on the image of a face that can be moved to mimic the movement of facial muscles during speech. In this way, the software can play back the words of the user while displaying the image of the cat moving its facial muscles to mimic actual speech. Martin further explained that the application could work with images of faces of any kind, including faces of cats, human beings or even inanimate objects at times.
The application promises to be a breakthrough in the world of mobile entertainment that is likely to take the world by storm. Although the software was primarily developed to be compatible with Mac systems, the popularity of the application will likely encourage spinoffs and similar applications to be developed for other systems and platforms. And if the responses of the visitors at the exhibition are anything to go by, it will not be very late before we see me-too versions of Crazy Talk appearing on the market.
Applications of the Software
The software has already found its way into the popular media. Its most memorable use was on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. In one episode of the show, the Crazy talk application was used on a photo of Osama Bin Laden. Apart from Jimmy Kimmel Live, the application has also been used on The Jon Stewart Show. It was recently offered for a price of $30 by Apple.
