The latest versions of Morpheus Software’s photo animation and manipulation titles Morpheus Photo Morpher, Morpheus Photo Warper, Morpheus Photo Mixer, and Morpheus Animation Suite are now integrated with Photobucket. Built using Photobucket’s API, the Morpheus titles provide Photobucket’s nearly 40 million users with the ability to morph and warp digital photos for fun and to then upload their morphed, warped, and blended photo animations and videos directly from inside the Morpheus programs to their Photobucket page. For more information, check out this page or go to Photobucket’s Application Gallery.

A new version of all Morpheus software titles has been released with social networking features. Now you can upload your animations seamlessly from Morpheus programs to YouTube, PhotoBucket, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and other great web destinations.

Download the new version of Morpheus Photo Morpher at:
http://www.morpheussoftware.net/morpheusmorph/download.php

Download the new version of Morpheus Photo Animation Suite at:
http://www.morpheussoftware.net/morpheus/download.php

Or visit the Morpheus homepage at:
http://www.morpheussoftware.net

Once you download the new version, under either program’s Share menu, select “Upload your morph to a website” and check out the new social networking features. From there, if you choose to upload to Morpheus Galleries, we’ll host your animations online for you for free where users will be able to view your creations, add their comments, rate them from 1 to 5 stars, and more. You can also view other users’ animations. Morpheus Galleries is similar to YouTube, except it is specifically focused on photo and video animations. Once your animations are uploaded, you can easily post them on countless social networking sites, into instant message windows, email messages, on your blog, and so on, all with just a mouse click.

The little video that could, should and did, Kitty Said What?, has been nominated for the YouTube 2007 Video Awards in the Creative category. Here’s a little something our Photo Animation Guy put together to encourage animania and animal-mania, hip hoppin’, trip-hoppin’, hamster and pug beat groovin’ morph lovers to get the vote out!

Our morphin’ jumpin’ jivin’ hiphopin’ furry-creature lovin’ creative partner Bowen has done it again, launching yet another lovable, danceable animal animation on YouTube. This one features a pet that may have slipped out of fashion but is definitely back in the spotlilght now - a hamster - let out of his/her(?) cage to invade the screens of fans of Kitty Said What? and I’m a Pug!.

This came in from Morpheus’ YouTube fanbase. Meow. As for letting your kitty crawl all over your laptop – file under These Are Professionals, Don’t Try This At Home Kids

Bowen keeps rockin’ and YouTube keeps stockin’ his morphin’ movies. Check this one out, fresh for the holidays, garnering hits and generating comments like “I love your videos and so does my bro please make more.”

The Kitty Said What? phenomenon continues. It’s outta control, spreading like wildfire in Malibu, inspiring talented kids to pay tribute, as you see here. Kitty was once lonely, but no longer. Kitty would like to thank its fans and introduce a new meower on the scene…

See more eery, morpheus-spiced and crazytalking seasonal animations at reallusion.com. CrazyTalk allows anyone to create animations from any digital still image. Create a virtual cast of characters to deliver animated vocal performances for video, web, mobile or messaging projects.

Morpheus and Reallusion are working together in a new partnership to introduce their synergistic products to each other’s users.

Rusty the Guitar Dude is one of a host of MySpacers who have embraced Morpheus as a means to spice up their online image. Check out Rusty’s macabre page here.

It dawns on us that the age of the still image as representation of self online is transitioning into the age of the morph. Becoming replaces being. In these miniature movies such as Rusty’s there are mini-narratives - stories of death and decay here, but elsewhere of growth and transformation. Let your imagination run wild, as they say. But don’t let it stop there; using Morpheus, you can express the imagination run wild and publish to your favorite community site. Stay tuned for news on this front…

Meowin’ and scratchin’ its way to the top, Bowen’s “Kitty Said What?” morphin’ cause celèbre continues to make waves on YouTube. Now it’s featured on the home page and has 1,648,403 views (not that we’re counting). The Stray Cats don’t have nuthin’ on Kitty, except Brian Setzer just might play a meaner guitar:>.

Some people have even made “Kitty Said What?” their music ringtone. You can download the Kitty Said What? ringtone at LilTone.com. Note: select “Other” from the dropdown menu to find this and other animania ringtones.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Aug. 8, 2007 – Morpheus Software, a leading publisher of digital photo animation software, today announced the launch of Mac editions of their widely popular titles Morpheus Photo Morpher, Morpheus Photo Warper, Morpheus Photo Mixer and Morpheus Photo Animation Suite, all developed from the ground up specifically for the Apple platform. […] » Read entire press release here

More quirky animating animals, more catchy tunes & good fun from our friend Bowen, as he tallies up the hits (625K+ as of this posting) on YouTube with the rockin’ good time of I’m a Pug! Woop - Morphin’ Pugs, a crowd pleasing, morphed-out music video sensation from the wacky land of pets bent on entertaining us video-glazed humans.

This clip has also garnered 11 YouTube Honors: #58 - Most Viewed (This Month) | #2 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Pets & Animals | #3 - Top Rated (This Month) - Pets & Animals | #96 - Most Discussed (This Month) | #3 - Most Discussed (This Month) - Pets & Animals | #83 - Most Discussed (All Time) - Pets & Animals | #18 - Top Favorites (This Month) | #1 - Top Favorites (This Month) - Pets & Animals | #70 - Top Favorites (All Time) - Pets & Animals | #4 - Most Linked (This Month) - Pets & Animals | #33 - Recently Featured - Pets & Animals

In addition, “I’m a Pug” ringtone has become a top ringtone download under the Other category on LilTone.com

Catchy and infectious, our colleague Bowen’s irresistible YouTube phenom "Kitty Said What?" pretty much starts and defines a new genre: pet rap. Having received 12K+ views in a week’s time [UPDATE: 2.9 MILLION VIEWS ON YOUTUBE AS OF 11/13/07], it’s delivered with inventive uses of morphing, sound sync and humour, and shows how Morpheus can serve as a cool tool in the arsenal of music video production. For kids of all ages. Way to go, Bowen – definitely keep ‘em coming.

OS X versions of all 4 major Morpheus Software products—Morpheus Photo Animation Suite, Morpheus Photo Morpher, Morpheus Photo Warper and Morpheus Photo Mixer—are now available for download at the Morpheus Software site. Starting in July, these products will hit the shelves of Apple Stores across the nation. So if you’re a Mac user and have been waiting for the killer animation and morphing app on your platform, the wait is over!

Another cool morph posted on YouTube has come to our attention. This one is a kind of drifting, romantic, dreamlike sequence of woven-together photographs of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, set to the music of the darkwave/etherial (or, if you prefer, gothic) band Dead Can Dance (the song is Host of Seraphim). There’s definitely some Mayan magic in this experiment - check it out here. As one YouTube viewer commented: “very hypnotizing.”

While perhaps not as flashy & ubiquitous as Morpheus Photo Morpher, Morpheus Photo Mixer has its own little cult of popularity too. Mixer can be used to blend elements of two photos into one composite photo. Morpher has hit YouTube, and Mixer has hit national TV. Witness the “If They Mated” show segment & website of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, where a series of Mixes are presented. Celebrities, of course, are a prime, easy and, let’s face it, worthwhile target for visual spoofing – Hollywood and other celebrity couples perhaps most of all. When you think about it, it’s kind of a new genre – VISUAL GOSSIP.

Here’s another sophisticated multi-image morph found on YouTube, this one featuring the progressive cosmetic transformations of songwriter, dancer, pop star, media sensation and internal exile (as the Soviet poets used to say) Michael Jackson, the one and only. This video has received 200,000+ views since being posted slightly over a month ago. Suffice to say that serial plastic surgery is a type of real-body morphing, echoed here in video format. Despite the gruesomeness of the ending image, we do find the final message well worth pondering: “If this is what’s happening outside, what’s going on inside?” You can view it here on YouTube. More and more complex morphs of this type are showing up on YouTube; the mophing momentum is gathering, you could say. Keep us informed about ones you spot or the ones you post on YouTube that we can feature on animaniablog.com.

There’s a beautiful, in-depth and inspiring new video on YouTube called Women in Art that morphs between an inspiring series of portraits of women in western art from a Byzantine fresco through Impressionism and Picasso. This video has received over a million user views in about a month since its posting. While we’re not 100% sure it was created using Morpheus, it’s sure looks that way, and we believe it well worth pointing to as yet another excellent use of this technology. There’s a lot of passion, patience and art appreciation in this video, which can easily be said to be a work of art itself. Take a look here.

Here’s a lovely tribute to art imitating life, and then still more art giving the imitation still more life (but not more still life). Did you get that? Well, maybe you can ask your classmates for notes. Anyway, we choose the classic title of a classic novel for the title of this classic piece, but it is also known to the author andreysue2 as “Blue Sunday No Flash.”

There’s a little tough guy in all of us, huh? And way before “G” hit MTV, there was the one and only Al C. Yo, don’t forget to pay your taxes, all you heavies out there, ’cause that’s how they got him in the end! Thanks for sending this in, Jmac945.

Thanks Tim for this smooth rendering of alien-ation. Scully & Mulder would be proud.

Thanks to frequent Morpheus collaborator (& Flash, branding and illustration wiz) Timothy Corrigan for this send up of American Idol.

Thanks to Morpheus user queenb****3769 (are there that many?) for sending this one in. Interestingly enough, there is actually some gothic architecture here – in the romantic moonlit backdrop, complete with tiny bats (of course) – before she dons her high heels and beams down to the red underworld hotel.

Morpheus user and YouTube member thomastittle sent us a nice note pointing to his brilliant, remarkable and – yes – enchanting animation of “Alyssa.” You can view the video here. Complete with soundtrack, this is a cinematic, compelling, cleverly-paced use of Morpheus to tell the story of a child’s growth. It exudes all the love of a caring parent, and practically creates a new medium - the photo album of the future. Thanks thomastittle!

It’s nice when a short animation can portray a small action inside the morph, adding motion and narrative to the mix. This submission does that with style, going from the photographic to the cartoon world and sending the viewer a kiss in the process.

Like a doll come to life in a Stephen King story, or an instantaneous snapshot across the room at the merry prankster’s midnight party, you see her eyes move toward you as she perceives your gaze and the color shift while all else remains the same. Killer concept and execution on this strobe effect morph. We like the butterflies and the sig too.

This morphin’ machine will take larrys and other intimidating mugs and turn ‘em into indestructible armor plated robots that run amok in all the playgrounds of the nation. Also useful for creating garden sculptures to keep the crows out & scare the neighbors…

Pretty self-explanatory – of course it helps if you look a whole lot like the star to begin with. Unlike Being John Malkovich, where you could only be Malkovich, with Morpheus you can be(come) anyone…