Bringing your art to life with animation is an awesome thing. You can make a movie with mansions, fancy cars, sexy models, special effects with no money as long as you have the tools and the skills. Doing animation is like being a million people in one. There’s no more casting for your movie script. Forget about licensing and permits for locations. Props are free. If you want a Benz, you draw it. Do you need Meagan Thee Stallion? No problem, you can draw her.
Back in the days, animation was an art that was done strictly frame by frame meaning each snippet of movement was a new drawing. There was so much drawing that needed to be done that they would outsource the inbetween drawing to India and China. When you look at the credits in a big animation production, you will see like over 100 animators that worked on the project. That is not including the overseas inbetweener artists.
Nowadays, animation is still a time consuming skill, but the innovations in computer software has made it a lot easier for the independent, solo animator. These new applications do a lot of the heavy lifting. Different programs have different features, so you have to find one that suits you. I will speak on the various programs available then I will elaborate on the program that I prefer to use.
1. Toon Boom Harmony is the software that is the industry standard. Family Guy, Rick and Morty, and Bob’s Burgers are made with Toon Boom. Toon Boom is an expensive piece of software. At this moment, the cost ranges from $28.50 to $129.50 a month to use their software. That’s right. You have to pay by the month. There are three tiers to the program: Essential, Advanced, and Premium. The Premium has every feature in the book.
2. Synfig is a free animation program. It is a vector based application. It is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. The program looks dated, but it is very capable.
3. Blender is a hell of a program, and it's free. This program is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. Blender is mostly known for its 3D capabilities, but it also has a 2D animation program within it called Grease Pencil. In Blender, you can combine 2D and 3D animation together. Youtube is loaded with Blender tutorials. The learning curve for this program can be intimidating, and you will need a powerful computer to take advantage of all its features. When I say this program has everything, I mean it. It even has a video editing program within it. Also, you can add on to the program because it is an open source application.
4. Pencil 2D is a free animation program that’s available for PC, Mac, and Linux. This program mainly focuses on traditional frame by frame animation. It does have some vector capabilities, but they are limited. If you have a traditional artist’s skillset, Pencil 2D is a great program.
5. Opentoonz is another free 2D program that is similar to Pencil 2D. It is also available on PC, Mac, and Linux. The interface on Opentoonz looks more modern than Pencil 2D. This program is more suited for the traditional animator, but it does have some modern features. You can rig characters with a bone system and move them around, so you don’t have to draw each frame out. This program has a strong Youtube community with a bunch of tutorials.
6. Flip a Clip is a free frame by frame app that is available on IOS and Android. This is the best animation program I’ve seen available for your mobile device. The app is very user friendly, but I haven’t seen a lot of tutorials for it on Youtube. I wish the community for this app would be bigger because it’s a fun app to play with.
7. Moho Pro is the program I use. It’s available for PC and Mac. The current price is $59 for the debut version and $399 for the pro version. This is a one time payment for the current version which is version 14. What you should do is use the 30 day free trial, and if you like it, get the pro version. The debut version is pretty limited.
I have been using this program for years. This program does not approach animation from a traditional frame by frame process. There’s no need to be drawing picture after picture to generate one second of animation. There are times when you will do a frame by frame sequence because that’s what the scene calls for, but there are other shortcuts this program has to speed up your animation workflow.
Moho Pro is a vector based animation program. You draw by using lines and shapes which can be edited, manipulated, and animated. With this program, you can draw with the mouse or trackpad. There are also tools within the program that can have you drawing with a stylus to get that hand drawing feeling, but this is not where this program shines.
You can import drawings from other programs into Moho Pro and animate those drawings. A lot of animators that use this program do that. You can rig characters with a bone system and move your characters around within time. This process saves you from drawing a bunch of pictures. You can draw your character once and move the arms and legs or any part of the character with the bone system.
There are plenty of Youtube tutorials available that show you how to use this program from beginning to end. This is one of the easier programs to use, yet it has a lot of powerful features. If you are looking for a free program that is similar to Moho Pro, try Synfig or Opentoonz which are two of the programs I mentioned above.
You can go on Youtube and search “Moho Animation Software” and you will find a tutorial series containing 39 videos that guide you from the beginning to the end on how to use the program. This is the Moho company channel, and it also has webinars and feature animations that were made with the program. There are also other channels on Youtube that have tutorials for the program. Moho Pro has a pretty big community, and they are happy to show you the ropes.
Click here for my animation tutorials.