Day 31 / 38 – Moho
One of Moho’s features is the ability to create frame-by-frame animation. Personally, I prefer doing frame-by-frame work in Procreate. There’s something pretty spectacular about being able to sit on the couch with my iPad and animate in my living room. When I’m already at my computer, the last thing I want to do is draw with my Wacom tablet off to the side while staring straight ahead at a monitor. Coloring a character, okay. Grinding through a walk cycle, no. Just personal preference.
Things to Know:
✔ Set up Frame by frame in Timeline
However, ever the masochist, that is exactly what I did. Pulled out my beat up copy of, The Animator’s Survival Kit and worked through a walk cycle.
frame by frame
To open the frame by frame option, go to the layers panel and click the +add, and select frame by frame from the drop down menu.
When you add the frame by frame option the timeline automatically creates a switch layer, and you have the option to add +New Frame, -Delete Frame, Duplicate Frame, and choose the frame interval.
Next, in your tools section select your pen tool, and in the freehand options drop down menu you can choose how you want your pen to perform (width, stroke, etc).
Add a frame
On frame_1 draw your whatever, then click +Add Frame, your original drawing will disappear and you can draw on your next frame. To see what you did before, click on enable onion skins so that you can see your last drawing and how your drawings are interacting. Typical frame by frame animation.
So in all the other lessons, I have kept my frames on 24fps, but for this walk cycle I changed it to 12fps. You can see the onion skins in red, showing you the previous frame.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
— Aristotle
Day 31 — Afterthoughts
Wellll….there is always that moment when you realize that owning a book and actually knowing a thing are two very different realities. Even while following the guide, I ended up with a bit of a stiff back-leg drag in my walk cycle. Not exactly the movement I was going for.
On a happy note, I successfully navigated Moho’s frame-by-frame animation tools, and I’m counting that as a win. Glad to be moving on.
limping through🧟 nik
