Tobe Bederitzky
I am Tobe. A songwriter, videographer, editor, producer and creative head of the successful children music project “Frank and his Friends” from Germany.
I dedicate myself fully to the musical and visual ideas of the show. So I needed to quickly animate our cartoon version without much effort. Since I do not have the time to fiddle around and read manuals, I came across Reallusion and their CrazyTalk and iClone software Anyone, who has ever tried other programs, knows how much work and computing power would be required to create an animated show, but by comparison, Reallusion has made it relatively easy for me.
Q: Hallo Tobe! Welcome to the Reallusion Feature Stories. Tell us a bit about yourself and your project “Frank and his friends”.
Hello, my name is Tobe from the children’s song project “Frank und seine Freunde” (Frank and his friends). We, Frank and I, are a small team which makes successfully children’s music for several years in Germany. Frank performs live and has several sidekicks- such as his best friend Zappel, the Zappeltier (an animal that fidgets).
We produce our own CDs, DVDs, YouTube videos, have our own radio show and recently also created an interactive musical. So as you can imagine, “Frank und seine Freunde” isn’t your everyday children’s music show. We are a complete performance.
Q: In your videos your team uses CrazyTalk Animator, iClone and even PopVideo. How did you discover our software, and why did you decide to use it instead of other software options? Can you tell us what advantages you found in our tools?
Since we have such a colorful and crazy children’s music program, it is important to support it audio-visually. So it was my idea to make cartoons, in order have Frank not follow the traditional way like other artists do. I wanted to create more depth for our shows, so I was looking for a suitable software a few years ago.
Everybody who wants to realize something knows that there is powerful software out there where you have to learn tons of tutorials in order to get the software running. But I don’t have time for that.
“After some research on the internet, I came across Reallusion’s iClone and CrazyTalk Animator and found that it alleviates my work by a lot. With these tools I can realize many ideas I have in mind.”
– Tobe Bederitzky / Children’s Show Producer
I have worked with Reallusion software now for 5 or 6 years. I started with CrazyTalk, but after CrazyTalk Animator launched I had this WOW moment. I knew other software was very complicated to use. So I started producing my first videos with this CrazyTalk Animator.
In our second video I mixed cartoon, animation, real footage (persons) and blue-screen videos. I believe that at that time I brought the software to its limits. I used three, or four different actors in CrazyTalk Animator and applied them to the scenes. This way I could easily realize my idea of bringing more depth into my videos.
The interactive musical was a totally different challenge. As I needed scenes that would accompany the music and show an interesting story to the audience. I wanted to do all that in iClone and I think it worked out quite well.
I used a lot of assets from the Reallusion Content Store. Which is great, because sometimes you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Time is money. I purchased quite a lot of the content and modified it so it matches our story. The musical had its premiere in December 2017 and was a huge success, when I was able to realize all my ideas with iClone.
I also do other things besides working on “Frank und seine Freunde”, like producing image videos and product videos for companies. For these, I also use CrazyTalk Animator. Especially the latest version 3, with Elastic Motions that make it super easy to create intros and animated texts. Before, I needed to use other software to edit which can be quite tricky sometimes.
Q: You have a loyal community of fans thanks to your own radio and roadshow. What can the community expect from “Frank and his friends” in the future?
For future projects, I would like to bring Zappel and his friends into the 3D world because the viewing habits of kids changed quite a lot. I grew up with “Maya the Bee”, which was a hand-drawn anime. Nowadays when kids watch it they ask – “Why does it look so weird?” This question would be raised when watching “Maya the Bee” or “Vicky the Viking”. So this year I would like to make Zappel into 3D avatar in iClone.
Frank und seine Freunde will also produce a mini TV series. And as streaming services are expanding, bringing our show to one of them is my goal. I am hoping for further good cooperation with Reallusion.
And to all the viewers:
“Look into Reallusion software! Get the trial version, try it out. Take a look at Reallusion and also our works for great ideas. And remember: Keep on fidgeting!”
– Tobe Bederitzky / Children’s Show Producer
To see more of Frank and his friends, please visit:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/FrankUndSeineFreunde
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frankundseinefreunde/
Website: http://frankundseinefreunde.de/
