Webinar Recording- Maja Krajewska from Animwood

[Víctor Paredes]

Edit: The webinar recording is now available on our Youtube channel




Join us on Today Wednesday, May 11 at 10am PDT (California Time) for a FREE 1-hour webinar with Maja Krajewska Maja Krajewska from Animwood.

Register here:
http://bit.ly/MohoWebinarAnimwood



Learn more about Maja and Animwood on our blog here:
https://moho.lostmarble.com/blogs/news/ ... t-animwood

[Arthritic]

Looking forward to this. Don't tell my boss, (during working hours).

[Víctor Paredes]

Hello! The webinar recording is now available on our Youtube channel. You can check the link on the first post

[ggoblin]

Thank you, this was a very insightful webinar.

The section on "multirig" was especially interesting - using one bone rig for all the characters. "Correction bones" are used (on frame 0) to adjust the rig for different body types. So everything from eye movements to walk cycles, etc can be done with the same rig, no need to recreated each time. As a beginner I didn't understand all the ins and outs of how it was accomplished, but its good to know that it can be done and is being used in a production environment rather than just as an experiment.

All their animation was done using bones and smart bones - no point animation. I guess this would be essential for a reusable rig setup. They even had smart bones set up for things like line width. Also I hadn't seen a dial for mouth rotation (angle) before - I guess it must come in useful for head rotations? Also was surprised to see over 20 pin bones used for what looked like a simple mouth? Especially when there was no mention of lip-sync or mouth shapes.

The smart actions were separated into different axis of movement - was this to ensure they dont interfere with each other as different axis create keyframes in different channels?

Also interesting was their workflow - it seems only the character animation was done in Moho. The characters were designed in Procreate, then vectorised in Illustrator and imported as svg layers into Moho for animation. Their character designs were clean, ideally suited for creation in Moho, but they decided against that. They also had to create an extra layer in illustrator marking the centres of joints so the bones could be created in the right place in Moho.

Simple 3d object like the robot arm was created and animated in blender - I know previous versions of Moho had some simple 3d abilities, haven't experimented to see what the current version has.

Then they had a dedicated animation team that did all the non-character animation; composition; effects and final render in After Effects. I know character animation is Moho's prize strength, but I was hoping some of the other motion graphics animation would also be done in Moho. But they didn't seem confident enough to follow this route in a production environment, they went to the extend of exporting the characters fingers separately from the rest of the character, from Moho to After Effects as they needed to add a simple motion graphics line in After Effects between the characters finger and hand.

Moho brilliant as it is, I hope future versions will expand its functionality in non-character related animation like motion graphics, text animation, better particles, better vector modelling tools, etc. so its a more rounded all purpose one stop 2d animation solution.

[Greenlaw]

FWIW, I used Moho for a lot of motion graphics in Fast & Furious Spy Racers. The Moho screen stuff is scattered throughout the show, usually for screens that are designed to be more cute or 'consumery'. The Moho anims were often combined with graphics and animation created in After Effects,. (This is a fairly typical workflow for me even when I'm making cartoon animations.)

TBH, in FFSR we actually did most of our screen graphics using After Effects. The more insanely complicated 'technical' stuff was the work an artist named Lasha Brodzeli. I learned a lot from working with Lasha, and the experience certainly changed how I think about and create screen graphics.

Anyway, depending on your goal, it's all a matter of using the best tool for the job. IMO, for screen and motion graphics, it's really hard to beat After Effects since its tools and workflow is designed for that. Just as I wouldn't bother using Ae for the level of 2D character animation I do in Moho...Moho is just better for that. Sure, Ae can do puppet-style animation too but it's just not as good or as easy to use as Moho.

Fortunately, the two programs play really well together, and there are no rules that say you can't use them both.

[ggoblin]

I would love to see your Moho motion graphics, do you have a link? I checked out Lasha Brodzeli youtube channel.. great suff though its a few years old.

Judging by the results I agree that its hard to beat AE for motion graphics. But I think its important that Moho can be used as an all purpose one stop 2d animation solution, in the same way AE often is. Otherwise Moho will just be seen as a character animation 'plug-in' for AE, that would be a shame as its such a capable system.

Also I think it needs better video handling - my system becomes very sluggish with a simple video element in the timeline. And I wasn't doing anything special - just playing it inside a 2d drawn tv set fixed in one part of the screen with fade in and out at start/end. Also the video lost its audio during import in to Moho.

[Greenlaw]

I would love to see your Moho motion graphics, do you have a link? I checked out Lasha Brodzeli youtube channel.. great suff though its a few years old.

Just watch Fast & Furious Spy Racers! I was the Lead Digital Animator on that show for about 3 years, and like the movies, this show was packed with screen and motion graphics.

As mentioned earlier, most of the 'super-techie' looking stuff was done using After Effects. The Moho screen animations came early on and were mainly related to gadgets 'developed' by the 13-year old Frostee...like his drone UI, phone UI and tablet screens. As Frostee's coding/hacking skills grew over the series, the screens became more sophisticated and that's when we gradually switched to the super-techie Ae style screens. Some of that was animated by me but most of the really 'high-end' looking screens were designed by Lasha (and he did a ton of them...this guy is a madman when it comes to this stuff. His work is as complex as it is beautiful.) I did lot of the more colorful screens seen in car dashboards and consoles, which were mostly a combination of Moho and Ae. If there were any cartoony elements featured in a screen, like character avatars or cute flapping/dancing drones, or if they looked intentionally video-gamey, that was likely animated by me.

If there were 3D screen elements involved, it was done using LightWave 3D if I did it, and Cinema 4D if Lasha did it. For example I built and animated all of the Holoquarium screens (the one with the digital sharks and octopus,) and Lasha did all the cool holographic stuff Frostee controlled using his VR gloves.

Some of the 2D backstory/fantasy segments were created as a combo of Moho and Ae...a lot of the early ones were animated by other artists on our team, and I did all of the ones from around the middle of the series onward, usually with designs provided by our fantastic art department. Many of the later 2D segments were created entirely in Moho, (the musical Sea Majors and the Doomsday/Puppetmaster sequences come to mind.)

The show has been completed and released for some time now so I'll probably cut a new personal demo reel this year. Ever since we wrapped, I've been busy working on at least a dozen other shows, so it might be a while before I can find the time. But when I get around to it, you'll hear about it in these forums of course.

Thanks for asking!

(Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack this thread, but once you get me started it's hard to stop.)

[ggoblin]

Thank you for sharing, its always inspiring to see where Moho is used in a real production. I will check it out!

I haven't heard of Fast & Furious Spy Racers! (too old ) , but I see there are several seasons. Is the Moho stuff only in season 1?

Is this one of the Moho screens:

https://youtu.be/TfaemsZ8USU?t=77

[youtube]TfaemsZ8USU?t=77[/youtube]

[Greenlaw]

I haven't heard of Fast & Furious Spy Racers! (too old ) , but I see there are several seasons. Is the Moho stuff only in season 1?

Moho was used for all 6 seasons of Fast. It wasn't used as much as in other shows I've worked on (like Boss Baby, The Croods, King Julian, Puss In Boots and Trolls,) but I did use Moho on Fast more than I expected to. Most of my Fast work was created using Ae, Illustrator, Photoshop and Nuke, and I used LightWave and Maya as the need came up. But for most of the 2D fantasy/backstory sequences that I worked on, I used Moho. (I didn't do all of them though; other artists who worked on some of these sequences used Adobe Animate and Ae, and some may have used Moho. The program used depended on the style of the animation required and who was working on it.)

Is this one of the Moho screens...

Oh, that's funny. I worked on nearly every shot in that sequence and I almost forgot about it. It was crazy because for some of those shots, the screen is visible in only one or two frames. Oh well...there was a pandemic going on, what else did I have to do?

Anyway, that particular tablet screen was designed and set up by Lasha, and I animated and composited it for the entire sequence. No Moho used in that sequence.