This week our Moho Featured Artist is Sonja Schneider aka Animalmotion from Germany! 🔥  Sonja uses Moho as her main 2D animation software ✨ 

Tell us about you

Hi! My name is Sonja Schneider, I am an animator and motion designer from Hamburg, Germany. I'm a freelance artist since 2007 and have been animating for TV series, apps, corporate and explanatory videos as well as for documentaries or e-learning tutorials. In the last years I have brought many children's books to life, which could be watched on TV, for instance.

Where do you get inspiration?

Every project is different, so every idea is born individually.

Sometimes everything is already predetermined and I only have to rig and animate. Then I draw the inspiration for the animation from the most expressive characteristics that the characters are supposed to have and put myself deeply into them.

At other times, everything has to be developed first - story, text, characters or graphics. Then a process begins in which determining goals and target groups has to be done first and afterwards developing content and design. Thereafter one's own experience, individual taste and what I have seen in films, art exhibitions and on social media over the years has an impact, too.

But occasionally ideas just arise from a feeling - or what you might call a flash of inspiration. Those are the most exciting moments!

What’s your hardware setup?

At the moment I work on an iMac (8 core i9 processor, 64 GB RAM, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB) in combination with an iPad Pro.

What do you like best about Moho?

For me it's the best software for 2D character animation. The way you can rig leads to maximum controllable and natural movements. Moreover I can also achieve a 3D kind of animation when working with vectors or meshes.

How has Moho helped you in your creative process?

Knowing that I can animate not only vectors but also pixel graphics, drawings and photos leads to a great freedom to animate almost any style and content. This opens up the possibilities for many different types of projects.

What’s your favorite project made with Moho? 

Well, that is not an easy decision. I love working on TV Series like "Licht an!/ Lights on!“ or especially "Dr. Brumm", where I could implement a 2.5D rigging and pre-animations like headturns or the swimming movements of a fish called "Pottwal". But I also like the hand-painted style of "Wanda Walfisch" or the cardboard cutout style of "Der Besuch /The Visitor".

Recently I animated a music video with a crazy book-eating fox and afterwards an explanatory film with burnt-out office workers... All of this has its own charm.

How has Moho improved your pipeline workflow?

With Smart bones and actions it is possible to pre-animate things like head turns or other movements. This speeds up the following animation process a lot.

For the Dr. Brumm series for example, I pre-animated some actions for the tail fin and the flippers of the fish, so their movements could be inserted in a loop by one single click.

In another project - screen animations for a Mark Forster concert - there was not much time for VFX and compositing, but the characters needed to have special lighting moods on their bodies. There had to be a campfire scene where the light flickered on the body and a scene on the moon that should also have a certain light mood. So I decided to create these highlights and tonals directly in Moho while rigging, whereby the light edges could move with the characters. For the campfire light, I also pre-animated an action so that the light flickering animation could be inserted very easily.

Where can we follow your work?

Best way to follow me is on instagram, to get some animation insights or rigging tutorials: https://www.instagram.com/animalmotion.de/
My website is: https://animalmotion.de/
My YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/@animalmotion2D