Think animated shows are one form of entertainment that can never be created and viewed simultaneously? Think again, said Victoria Nece (@FakeGreenDress), product manager of motion graphics and visual effects at Adobe Systems Inc.

Character Animator is an Adobe application that “allows you to do real-time live animation using your webcam and your microphone and also even just touchscreen, keyboard, mouse — basically hardware you already have,” Nece said.

Artists or amateurs can use Character Animator to give life to characters they create in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, she told Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during this week’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. (*Disclosure below.) 

And the results are good enough for prime time — or late night, literally. “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” uses Character Animator in its “Cartoon Trump” spoof.

So can we expect a slew of amateur animators to follow the footsteps of independent YouTube video stars? It looks possible. “We’ve added Mercury Transmit support, which means that you can go out to broadcast hardware; you can connect to Absolute Stream, to Facebook Live, YouTube Live,” Nece said.

Collaboration goes live

Multiple artists can collaborate in real time with tools Adobe has introduced in the new After Effects release available to anyone with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

A beta service called Adobe Team Projects allows creative changes to show up without any rendering across Adobe After Effects and Premiere. “I’ve been doing press demos where I’m in Seattle and one of my colleague’s is in Germany, and we’re collaborating live on the same project,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the NAB Show. (*Disclosure: Western Digital is sponsoring theCUBE’s coverage at the show. Neither Western Digital nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE