Over 20 Million Hits on YouTube with CrazyTalk

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I'm an old retired guy who likes to play with computers. In my prior life I served 21 years in the air force where I flew a variety of airplanes. I served two combat tours in Vietnam during which I flew 150 combat missions. I have a profound respect for all branches of the military and I deeply love the USA. Following my time in the air force I acquired a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science and worked for several large insurance companies.

Q: How, and When did you discover CrazyTalk?

I started creating videos in 2007 when I first saw a video on the internet in which a person had interviewed himself. That was enough to inspire me to start experimenting with green screen and other special effects. From that I branched out to crude animations until I discovered Crazy Talk on the Reallusion website, and immediately recognized its potential for making videos that would really stand out. To date I have been playing with computers for more than thirty years, and am still able to learn something new every day.

Q: What kind of animated videos do you create? What do you wish people to take from your videos?

My YouTube channel is approaching twenty million hits and the videos on my channel range from the whimsical with no goal other than to amuse or inspire someone, to the political in which I take potshots at whichever political party is the most outrageous at that time. I have made video tributes to the people I admire and I've made videos to ridicule some egotistical "celebrities". I get a lot of satisfaction out of the creative process of creating a video and I'm happy when someone occasionally acknowledges my work with a compliment. If I've entertained someone while making them think about something socially significant – then I feel that I've been successful. I've also made a number of video tributes to people who've served in our military and I've given special recognition to some of those who were killed while serving our country.

Q: In your videos, you have lots of great songs. Who are the other artists you work with?

My preferred approach to creating an animated video is to find a song that strikes me as humorous or ironic, select an appropriate singing avatar, animate it with Crazy Talk and then further illustrate the song using appropriate background images to drive home the song's message. My recent video "Putin on the Ritz" uses this technique. I selected an image of Vladimir Putin to animate as the singer and used a picture of the Kremlin as the backdrop. The music is a very clever song which was written and performed by the Capitol Steps.

Over the years I've received permission to use the songs of a number of talented artists. (1) I've done a lot of videos using the humorous songs written by Jesse Goldberg who is a playwright, song writer and singer who lives in Nashville, (2) the Capitol Steps who are a group who have been writing and performing songs since 1981, have given me permission to use their songs in my videos (3) I've been granted permission to use the songs of the "George W. Bush Singers" in some of my videos, in which I gently ridiculed George Bush. (4) Johnny Seay who is a country singer gave me permission to use his songs. (5) Rick Stallworth who performs as "Rick" graciously gave his permission for me to use his songs. (6) Lisa Koch gave me her permission to use her song "I'm a Middle-aged Woman" in my video of the same name. (7) Lowell Shyette gave me permission to use his music. (8) Chris Webbe an Australia Rocker contacted me and asked me to animate one of his songs and (9) and Richard Kates, a British actor, writer, director, singer contacted me and requested that I use his songs in some of my videos

Recently I've spent much of my time using Crazy Talk to animate the songs written and performed by the Capitol Steps. My videos using their songs have collectively received more than four million hits. The Capitol Steps rewards me by giving me tickets to their performances (when they perform somewhere near my home) and they have also given me all of their CDs (they've released more than 30 albums over a period of 30 years) and they occasionally feature my videos on the website.