Old character... new life in Moho

[heyvern]

I was going to create this short using 3D... but... I love 3D and I know it would have turned out great...

But I find working in 2D so much faster with quicker results.

I had original created animatics for this and found that I could just "reuse" them in Moho.

This is still early stages of this character but I am very pleased with the results so far... I am really digging Moho's drawing tools and find I can produce an "Adobe Illustratorish" look... and being able to easily animate this is fantastic!

Can't wait to do some of the facial poses for this guy... he will star in a comic "spoof".

He is completely all vector. Even the hair. I am really pleased with the hair. I thought I might have to use an image but was able to get the look I wanted using several layers.



-Vern

[Wolfkind]

Excellent work, can't wait to see what comes of this.

[ulrik]

Very well done!

[gavi dvan]

Wow very nice. How's you do the hair, is that with fancy brushes?
Can't wait to see what comes of this.

[heyvern]

The hair was done originally with brushes (the above image).

I have since removed the brush effect and kept it simple with just "wiggly" vectors. Speeds up render I think and looks just as good. (image below).



I am using "noisy lines" and "extra lines" set to like... 4 on 4 different layers. 2 black hair lines alternate with two shorter white lines with gradient effects set to screen to create that sort of gray hair at the base and temples.

I have two layers to mask the hair. One layer has two soft edge fills. One big soft edge (top fade) and a tighter fade for the hair line at his forehead.

The second layer mask has a hard edge so I can control how the hair fades off on the outside and against the face.

It works great! I just discovered how to do this and I am really happy. I also just discovered how to have more complex masks using nested groups! This kicks some major arse!

Here is a link to the storyboard/animatic for this short:
http://www.lowrestv.com/animatic.mov
(the animatic is not complete. I have not added the "punch line" yet.)

It is called:

The Incompetent Secret Agent.

I was planning to do this in 3D but I really liked the "sketchy" style of the animatic... and using moho I will be able to produce it quicker. I am faster drawing than modeling in 3D.

-Vern

[heyvern]

Ouch!

Rough test...

... be careful with those zippers...

http://www.lowrestv.com/misc_movies/ISA_front3b.mov

-vern

[bupaje]

Very cool, great expressions and transition.

[p6r]

Incredible !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations !

[dekka]

this looks awesome. what i'd like to know is how you did the shadows on the face.
send some more man.
rock on

[heyvern]

Shadows on the face are several layers.

The shadows are filled with white. Then a gradient effect which is white at one end and alpha is zero. The other end of the gradient is a slightly darker color than the base skin tone. I adjust the alpha to vary the darkness of the shadow on each shape.

Then the layer blending is set to multiply.

What happens is... white doesn't "multiply" since it is... well white. So the white becomes "invisible" to the base face color layer underneath the shadow layer. I then adjust the gradient angle so it "blends" the way I like it.

In some spots the shadows have to be on multiple layers so they multiply properly. For instance under the bridge of the nose. There is a shadow that darkens another shadow and the highlight on the sides of the nose. Can't do that in one layer. The shape on top is "opaque" so I have to put it on a separate shadow layer.

Highlights are done in a similar fashion only reversed. Black is used instead of white on the gradient and the base color of the shape. The color side of the highlight is a lighter version of skin tone. Using a color for highlight is better than white. White tends to desaturate and look a little "gray".

The trouble with this technique is that you can only see the effect with a render. But the render is really fast and I kind of get a feel for what is going on.

The other odd thing is that the shadow areas are "white" in the preview... but are "dark" in the render and the highlights are black in the preview and light in the render... so... I kind of have to remember that as I work.

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I have a shadow switch layer for around the mouth with the same set up since it needs to "change" with the mouth shapes. Same for the eyes.

I use the embedded switchslave script from... uh... 7feet? Yeah that's the guy. 7feet. That switchslave script is a god send. Fantastic! I use it for everything.

I use this script to synch up the mouth switch layer with its matching shadow switch layer.

This sounds complicated but it really isn't. If all this stuff were in one layer it would be the same amount of work really... since all those shapes have to exist anyway.

The whole head is in a group so I can do squetch very easily by just scaling the layer for the that whole group.
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I am in the process of simplifying the highlight and shadow layers around the eyes, nose and forehead area and assigning them to bones for the eyebrows and a switch layer for the eye shapes.

Once it's done it just works. I might have to do the odd point motion key frame tweak here and there but that won't happen till the very end.

The next step will be a head turn and profile version. Once the face elements are all done I'm ready to go. The body will be simple by comparison.

The short I am doing has no dialogue... so the face poses will need to be very expressive.

Sorry for the long explanation. I may have to do a tutorial when I get the time... unless someone has already done something similar.

I am still a very new user of Moho.

-Vern

[heyvern]

Ugh!

I feel kind of silly... a little silly. I feel like I have been walking around all day with my fly open...

I have been jumping through hoops using the gradient effect and never even tried to use the shaded effect!

Woohoo! I like it!

I have gone a different direction now with the style of this guy. More soft shading.

I still use the gradient in a few spots but am have switched to more use of the shaded effect.



-Vern

[heyvern]

New clip with the new look...

http://www.lowrestv.com/misc_movies/ISA_front5b.mov

-vern

[PhantomIre]

DUDE!!!! THAT IS SO FREAKIN AWESOME! I would do that, because I so know I could, BUT... I... just don't feel like investing that much time. How long did that take. I'm talking about, from concept to last post.

[heyvern]

Well... keep in mind I am a fairly new user... so there is the stupid mistake time factor... there is also the obsessive compulsive it has to be perfect tweak for hours unnecessarily time factor.

I was also experimenting up the wazoo (technical term) with how to do it.

I spent a lot of time dealing with... uh... er... gradient keys that got into the animation key frames... I kept having to delete gradient effects and redo them.

The "drawing" or design itself I did ages ago.. so I basically was tracing an almost finished illustration in Moho...

... hmm... I think I spent so far 16-24+ hours? Probably more? It was "non-contiguous" time so it is hard to remember. This is fun stuff for me so when I had an hour or two to kill I would go back into it.

I have only been working on it since friday off and on.

(I am a self employed web designer who volunteers too much... I have like 5 different projects for different things going at the same time. Fortunately two of them involve Moho right now.)

It would have been WAAAYYY less time if I had only tried using the shaded effect FIRST dagnabit!

Once I started to use the shaded effect it was much faster getting the look I wanted. I kind of "redid" the whole thing in a smaller portion of that time.

I literally pretty much redid all the shading shape layers when I switched to the shaded effect.

The new shading works PERFECTLY with animation now. I didn't have to tweak diddly squat for the key frames when I changed the base shading efect. I left all the keys just as there were and everything looked great.

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Despite all of the "complaints" about Moho's drawing tools...

I actually love drawing in Moho! I wish sometimes Adobe Illustrator worked in a similar fashion! Variable stroke widths?!?!? Cool! I wish AI could do that.

I do wish Moho had a live "preview" mode... but like I said the render only takes a few seconds to preview the look.

I hope people realize how much power they have with this for a very low price. Cheap affordable tools for poor artists... I applaud this with tears of happiness.

Please note... I work at home... I don't interact with many people during the day so I can get extremely "wordy" on these forums... I have a reputation for this. Forgive me... it is my one fault.

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p.s. I still think Lost Marble and Hash Inc. were "separated at birth". I love 'em to death. They make my two absolute favorite applications and they care about their customers. They both stick out like a "not sore thumb" in the software biz.

-Vern

[PhantomIre]

Not that I need something else to be addicted to or anything, but what is Hash Inc. I'm interested because if you love moho and you love hash inc. as well, then I might also love hash inc. as I too love moho. It's all about that whole relations thing we learned in geometry (i wish i could remember what it was really called now.)

So, anyways, another question. WHEN ARE YOU COMING OUT WITH A FREAKIN TUTORIAL TO MAKE SWEET-ASS-SWEET PICS LIKE THE ONE YOU GOT THERE? Do you have a website where you would put this tutorial? Well, keep us moho-addicts posted!

PS if it is not too much to ask, please stop saying your "super new" to moho and then go and talk about your drawing with that expert-level lingo, it makes the rest of us look bad.