Reallusion, which specializes in 3D and 2D cinematic tools, has introduced CrazyTalk7 (http://macte.ch/xcuGB) on the Mac App Store. It costsUS$29.99 and requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher.

CrazyTalk7 is a digital media application. It lets you create talking character videos from any digital photograph. According to the folks at Reallusion, you can “bring any face to life with CrazyTalk7’s simple face-fitting guide, and then use your own voice to puppet your actor’s performance.”

The ability to animate characters with any voice or text-to-speech engine, allows any user to create animated shorts, video hosts, cartoon characters and more.  With CrazyTalk7 you can choose a photo or illustration, fit the facial features, add audio to generate animations, and see your characters perform in real-time. You can save movies for editing in iMovie, or directly upload them to YouTube.