LivePortrait — a fun way to animate headshots

Certainly, you have hundreds, or even thousands of family portraits scattered across various disks and devices at home. Now there is a new online platform called LivePortrait, which offers a fun and free method to turn these static images into vivid animated videos in just a few seconds.

This open source project, jointly launched by Kuaishou Technology and Fudan University in China, utilizes specially trained models that can convert animations from videos or webcams, and transfer these movements onto images or photographs.

The difference between LivePortrait and other similar portrait animators lies in the extensive customization options available for you to create the final effect on an image.

I attempted to animate our beloved Mona Lisa portrait for the first time, and the result exceeded my expectations; it was remarkably good. On the website, I used a sample video portrait, and Mona Lisa exhibited stunning facial expressions. However, when I tried using my own uploaded video, the effect was not as vivid. Apparently, to fully leverage the strengths of this platform, intense and expressive eye or lip movements are necessary. Nonetheless, the outcome was still quite impressive. In my experiment, the character Lucy was merely speaking to the camera, which made the Girl with a Pearl Earring appear more like she was mumbling to herself rather than articulating distinct emotions.

Of course, you can go to our website and try LivePortrait for free. It will definitely make you feel amazing.