Storyblender, the casual animation site that launched at TechCrunch40 that lets you put together customized goofy video clips, has just opened up a fun new side project called Make Me Talk. The new web app lets you stick some fake lips on the photo of your choosing and make them move realistically in sync with a voice recording.

To use the service, just upload a photo (upclose headshots work best), and choose from a handful of lip designs. Once you’ve resized and placed the lips, you’re asked to make your recording of up to 60 seconds. The audio detection seems to work pretty well (you can see a demo video below), though I wish there was more variety in lip choices. Even without much variety, it’s still a lot of fun.

Other services that offer similar talking avatars include Beema (covered here), Vidiator, and Oddacast’s Voki.

Note: If you’re having trouble getting the lips to sync correctly, try closing any other tabs in your browser that might be playing a Flash video (this bug should be fixed by early next week).

http://www.storyblender.com/flash/SBMMTWizard.swf?v=90915935320090109132214&host=www.storyblender.com&embed=true