Hi all, Tim here, for real this time. I have come to the point where I consider these animated avatars as friends of mine. I have a couple of favorites I use a lot. But, have many that I can relate too. Take Natalie and her twin sister Amelia for instance. One is young and fiesty while the other is prudish and demure. Errr, at least those are the lifestyles that their apperal project. When creating a new animated avatar video select an avatar that represents the theme of the video project.

In this next video we feature Natalie a young woman with a pony tail. We jazzed her up with a lot of motion effects to liven up the atmosphere of the video and to cover up some unwanted glitches.

When I first recorded the background (screen capture) footage I was apalled by all the timing glicthes between mouse clicks. Fortunately I know how to fix that. See if you can find all the glitch fixes in this animated avatar presenter video...

Animated Avatar Presenters

Webstite Tips:

• Glitches are undesirable sometimes and sometimes intentional. To fix an undesirable glitch follow these steps:
  1. Locate the frame in your timeline that immediately preceeds the first glitch frame.
  2. Make an image copy or still frame of just that frame.
  3. Stretch the still frame over any succeeding glitch frames until the glitch ends.

  If the glitch is just 3 frames long the the still Frame will perfectly hide it without being perceived. If the glitch is over 5 frames long, the eye will notice the jump. You may be able to disguise the jump with a 3 frame dissolve, which will help mask the jump.

• Another glitch fix method is the transition. You can cut out the glitch frames, then butt up the 2 ends and put in a transition between the 2 scenes to cover it up. I used the "flip" transition in this video to cover up some awkward jump cuts that happened in the cutting process.
• Animation can add style and tempo to a video. Try to move the characters around and change their sizes to add juxtopposition to achieve a perspective not inherent in the original recordings. This technique can give a depth perception to your scenes, where none really exists. See how it's done... on the next page.