How to Create a Talking Santa Claus in Adobe Premiere and Photoshop

Santa Claus is a huge part of a child's life and sooner or later that concept may seem to fade from their mind as well as the magic of Christmas. Help keep their faith in Santa Claus alive by creating a talking Santa, that actually greets and speaks. Instead of wearing a fake beard and trying to trick them, use advanced animation tricks to add a new twist on this iconic figure.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Premiere

Instructions

Adobe Photoshop

1. Open up Adobe Photoshop. Load a picture of Santa Claus into the program by going to FILE>OPEN or by dragging the picture into the program. The best way to do this project is by creating your own simple Santa Claus picture or using a closed mouth cartoon picture of Santa Claus from an image database.

2. Save the original picture as SANTA_1. This will keep the project organized when you are doing the Adobe Premiere part of the project.

3. Use the black paint brush tool to draw a wide open mouth on Santa’s face. Use small brush strokes, because any mistake can be taken away by using the “History Tool”.

4. Save this image as “SANTA_2” in either a JPEG or Photoshop file format. A JPEG file will be much smaller if you are trying to save hard drive space.

5. Erase the mouth that you just created by using the eraser tool and now create a mouth that is only half open. Save this file as “SANTA_3” in either a JPEG or Photoshop file format.

Adobe Premiere

1. Start a new project in Adobe Premiere and label this project as “Talking Santa”. Import the three Santa pictures into the program by right-clicking in the project window and selecting “Import” from the drop down menu.

2. Drag the first Santa down into the project. Right-click on the file and select the option that says “Speed/Duration”. Change the duration to 00:00:03 and press “OK”. Repeat this process for the other two files.

3. Highlight all three of the files by clicking and dragging until they are all slightly darkened. Press “CTRL+C” to copy the files. Drag the timeline navigation tool past the three clips and press “CTRL+V” to paste the files. Keep pasting until there is around 10 through 15 seconds of footage.

4. Mix up the order of some of the pictures so everything is not repetitive. For example, put 2 “SANTA_2” clips next to each other, and alternate different patterns. Test out how the mouth movements look by pressing “Enter” to render a preview.

5. Import a voice recording into the project. Drag the audio clip down into the “Audio 1” of the timeline window. Press “Enter” again to see a preview of how the talking Santa matches the audio. Make adjustments as needed.

6. Go to FILE>EXPORT>MOVIE to output the greeting. Save it as an AVI for a large file and an WMV for a quick file that will send online fast.