This week our Moho Featured Artist is the talented freelance animator Nicolás González 🔥  Moho is his 2D animation software when animating characters and much more! ✨ 

Tell us about yourself

I studied filmmaking in college, and wrote the script for the class feature film on the final year. I thought I wanted to pursue an assistant director or scriptwriter career, but after graduating I found out that the set life wasn't for me. I've always loved drawing, so I decided to "mix" that with filmmaking and have a shot at animation. Without any contacts, knowledge of the field or animation principles, I shut myself for 4 months and made a hand drawn 3-minute animated short called Hermano Weñi. It wasn't very good, but I sent it anyway to all the Chilean animation studios that I found on a Google search, and it got me my first jobs making animated spots for an institution focused on preschool content. The spots were made with Moho (then Anime Studio 9), so it was the first cut-out animation software I used, figuring what to do mainly through Youtube tutorials. Slowly from there on, I got other jobs as a rigger and character animator in several TV series for kids, where my skills with Moho greatly improved under the mentorship of Nahuel Poggi. This allowed me to build up a decent animation reel, which helped me getting a job as rigger for the Youtube channel Cas van de Pol a couple of years ago.

Where do you get inspiration?

Watching other people's animations and illustrations is always the best source for inspiration. I'm also a massive comics fan, and a lot of my ideas for characters and stories come from a mix of the graphic novels and animated movies that I've seen. Studio Ghibli and the Lord of the Rings universe are huge influences on me as well.

What’s your hardware setup?

 
I use a desktop PC, Intel Core i5-9400F; CPU @ 2.90GHz and 16 Gb RAM. My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super.

What do you like best about Moho?

 
I think Moho is the best rigging software for 2D animation; it combines great capabilities with a user friendly and intuitive interface. The rigging system is very easy to navigate, simple to set up and allows you to make almost everything you want the character to do if the design is well planned. The frame-by-frame feature can make up for any issues with the rigs in certain frames, and it is also easy to export into different formats to be used in other software.

How has Moho helped you in your creative process?

It has helped a lot in understanding and getting better at the principles of animation, thanks to the design of the timeline and keyframes. The rigging system is so intuitive that it has allowed me to invent new ways of solving an issue just by messing around with the options. 

What’s your favorite project made with Moho?

I'd say my favorite projects so far have been the Cas van de Pol recaps on Youtube. They are not only very entertaining to work on, and encourage the animator's creative input, but the character designs happen to be perfect for Moho's capabilities and features as a rigging software. 

How has Moho improved your pipeline workflow?

It's very quick. You can get key poses done in a few minutes, without having to modify several vector layers by hand, thanks to the smart bones system. This helps to have the basic timing and look of a shot approved very rapidly. After that, it's only a matter of letting the software do the inbetweening and correcting the timing where its needed using the keyframe node options.

Where can we find you?