Making still images talk

I’ve been working on some new/old technologies lately, and if you take a look at this video, you’ll see a magician from the 1930’s who has something to say. The beauty of this technology, once you see what it does, is that what’s going on under the hood is simple to do. I’ve taken a still image (an historical poster which is in the public domain), done a bit of Photoshop work with it, and then simply supplied a voice track (in this case, a Velveeta radio ad from the 1940’s), and technology does the rest.

I can create an entire thirty second spot with an animated spokesperson (person, animal, product, basically any still shot) in a fraction of the time, and at a fraction of the cost, that it would have taken to animate it by traditional means. Think of some of the applications here: advertising, educational modules, animated holiday cards, any application which needs to get a message across in a very creative way.