Bring a photo to life, talking head

[HollandAS]

I would like some help bringing still photos to life. I want to make it appear the mouth is moving, the eyes are blinking, gentle head tilts, etc. 

I have seen plenty of online AI generators, "free apps," etc. that do this. I HAVE to believe that our professional software would allow us to do something similar, if not better. I have attached what I am looking for and what I have been able to accomplish. Please send over any ideas!

[Mylenium]

This isn't a magic process. Your reference example is the cheapest version possible and your own version isn't much different. It only lacks the impact because you applied the distortion effect more cautiously, which is actually good. If you want more, you have to slice up your images/ videos and treat the individual elements with their own set of effects to make ears flap, eyes blink and mouths move. The actual talking is a different thing, but if you want it to be real you have to study up on visemes and phonemes as used in serious 3D character animation and 2D cartoons. Otherwise a simple "jibber-jabber" approach will probably suffice, meaning you could try and convert a waveform to keyframes to drive parameters liek the displacement amount or use things like wiggle() expressions to vaguely mimic this. Either way, if you want it to be "real", looking for online generators and magic AI functions isn't the answer. You really have to study up and refine your techniques.

Mylenium

[Rick Gerard]

Several AI tools will do a better job than your example with a couple of clicks. If you only need to deliver an MP4, I would look there. 

'Tokkingheads' Lets You Animate Portraits Using ... - PetaPixel

13 Best Apps that Bring Photos to Life and Make Them Talk

For some tasks, After Effects is the wrong tool. If you must use AE, there are some fairly good tutorials online. None of them are perfect, but they will get you started:

Make Still Images Talk in Adobe After Effects

After Effects tutorial | Make Pictures Talk

After Effects Tutorial │ Making A Still IMAGE TALK

[HollandAS]

First off, THANK YOU for your comment!

Secondly, I am open anything in the Adobe Suite or I also have Davinic, let me know if you think of a better solution.

[Rick Gerard]

After Effects or Character Animator are your two options. Each shot would be a comp in After Effects. You would render the comps and then do the final edit in Premiere Pro.

The other option is one of the AI options I gave you links to. The difference in time required to complete the work would be something like 3 or 4 hours in After Effects or Character Animator preparing and editing 7 seconds of audio and images for the animation or four or five minutes using one of the AI tools available to do the job. Unless you have a specific set of production standards you have to adhere to for a client, the AI route would be the way to go.

After Effects and Character Animator are not really designed to automate things like that. They are designed to give you complete control over every pixel. Maybe, sometime in the future, some AI features will be implemented that make it easier to find the mouth of any kind of animal in a photograph, do the masking and separating for you, and then help you sync distortions to an audio track. AE is just not there yet.

[John30263815e22r]

Actually, CC split is very good for AE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SlzhDkPIF4