This week our Moho Featured Artist is Pistachio Studios, run by Cláudio Sá from Portugal! 🔥 They create original content like NERONI Kids and "Chum Chum Shapes", but also produce commercial animations. All using Moho as their main 2D animation software ✨ 

Tell us about you

My name is Cláudio Sá and I’m the founder and owner of Pistachio Studios, an award-winning animation production studio from Portugal. We create original content and also produce commercial animations for other agencies and industries such healthcare, education, construction, tourism or nonprofit organizations.

One of our original projects is a channel called NERONI KIDS (https://www.youtube.com/c/NERONIkids) – where we create engaging animations for babies and toddlers.

PISTACHIO STUDIOS 2D SHOWREEL 2022

Where do you get inspiration?

It’s a complex question. I love good stories, even of small events. When someone has a good story to tell, I pay attention. Since a very young age I found cinema to be the best medium to tell stories and for me animated films are the most beautiful form of art.

What’s your hardware setup?

Intel® Core™ i7-11800H
RAM DDR4 (3200 MHz)
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060

Omen Laptops
Dual screen – second screen is a Wacom Cintiq

What do you like best about Moho?

Moho is our main 2D animation software! I love how user friendly it is and how much you can do inside the software. It allows you to produce more while keeping a very high quality. I also find very useful the Photoshop PSD import feature.

How has Moho helped you in your creative process?

I started using the software back in 2008 (former Anime Studio Pro) to produce my short-films and experimental animations. I was using the good old Flash up until then but it was limited in terms of artistic looks. When I managed to import my Photoshop illustrations and rig them it opened a new world for me. Also my camera work improved a lot because it was not flat anymore with the layer depth/ 3D camera.

Can you talk about "Chum Chum Shapes & Friends" series and how it is made using Moho?

The series is about a group of friendly shapes - their creations, emotions and adventures. It’s a show that encourages smaller children to be creative. This pilot was entirely produced inside Moho – from character designs, rigs, background artwork to animation. As it started as a personal project and it was made with a very small team (we were 3 in total).

One of the Moho artists that worked in this pilot is Ehsan Asadian (featured in Moho’s Blog too not long ago) a very talented animator, who helped me a lot to achieve what I had in my mind for the animation style, so he deserves a lot of credit. The other artist that helped me in the early stages of pre-production was Gustav Baia, that has incredible storyboarding skills!

How has Moho improved your pipeline workflow?

Most of all, it saves a lot of time in the animation stage. Moho's timeline is perfect and very easy to design and animate all in one place. As it’s so versatile allows you to do amends on the go which is very helpful.

Where can we follow your work?

NERONI KIDS on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/NERONIkids
Pistachio Studios WEBSITE: https://pistachiostudios.com/en/
Pistachio Studios on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/pistachiostudios