Post 43 – moho magic🪄
This week, I started the Moho Magic Rigging Course by the amazing Dani Abram, Moho guru and expert rigger. I’m currently 12% through the course, and so far, the topics have included the UI workspace, project settings, the Draw menu, and the Styles menu.
Even though much of it has been review for me, Learning Moho: From Beginner to Expert does a GREAT job of walking you through the basics of the program. I’ve really enjoyed Dani’s fun personality and sequential explanations, and I’ve picked up a few new tips along the way. There’s also a bit more emphasis on the “why” behind everything, which has been really helpful.
Things to Know:
✔ create a vector character using shapes.
✔ use hierarchy in bone layers
Our First Rig
It was very fun this week actually learning how a “rigger” does a proper rig, but it is one thing to rig something, and another thing to animate it properly. That’s why I revisited this video by Alex Grigg. 👆 The man knows how to animate.
weight.
Well, animating is all about timing, spacing, and weight (and more).
But mostly, physics.
I am starting to believe a brain is naturally wired for physics. Is that like an internal beat?
Why do some people have it unh, unh, unh, and others (no names) do not.
Rigging Structure
For your bouncing ball…
🦴 Bone Layer (The main master folder, where your bones reside).
↳ 🖼️ Vector Artwork (your circle or shape, whatever shape you are animating).
Birdy
Another thing that I worked on, which Dani recommended, was drawing my vector character with as few points as possible. I love how she says, “as riggers.” Well, I’m not an animator or a rigger, but as a motion enthusiast, I still dig this.
As an expert rigger, she can see into the future of how a character will move. She’s thinking ahead, trying to make the animator’s job as easy as possible. This is so hard for me. I just want to grab the brush and make a mess. I restrained myself with this little birdy and used only shapes to create him (mostly). I wrote this and then discovered, less points can actually be problematic when you want a bend in your characters legs, arms, wings, etc…so put some points on the bendy parts.
“Sorry, I’ve got the most hipster keyboard, useless really, but so pretty. ”
Birdy
Post 43 — Afterthoughts
Side note—and so important: If you’re watching YouTube and don’t want the sidebar on the right-hand side, just click Shift + T and voilà!
Okay, 43 post in Moho, and the more you know, the more you want to go… and then you realize you still can’t go far enough. 😂
My special challenge this week: I thought I had learned the additive walk cycle, only to discover that when I put a special cadence into the character, I couldn’t get it to loop correctly. So, once again, a bit of a slide backward before moving forward.
I’m still slightly confused about actions and target bones. Sometimes I think I’m giving Moho conflicting directions. My takeaway tip from the videos this week: a vector can only be in one place at a time. Apparently, this is something I need to figure out.
So, I’m having a bit of what we call in Instructional Design a Near Transfer Failure. I’m still dependent on scaffolding and experiencing some context-bound learning. I’m hoping that as I move through the course, I’ll continue building my schematic knowledge and eventually be able to apply what I’m learning more independently.
Until then, bopping along. 🐥 nik
