ABOUT

A short animation about Henry VIII looking for his lost wife. Why would she hide from him? I don't know...

The illustrations for this animation were created using monotype and collagraph techniques. The finished elements were scanned and imported into Moho Pro.

I used a combination of Moho's Smart Bones, Mesh Layers and Actions to animate the pupils and mouth, and to control how the printed elements deformed in different poses, especially during extreme bends. With Target Bones and Bone Constraints in place, it was surprisingly easy to create the stylised movements I'd envisioned for these illustrations. It felt almost like directing an actor.

Probably the most important consideration when building a character rig is planning it around what you want the character to be able to do. But Moho is also very forgiving. On several occasions, I discovered that the way I'd initially divided the prints wasn't working quite as intended, and that I needed either smaller image parts or more bones.

Even when changes to pivot points, layer dimensions or positions seemed likely to cause major problems (as has happened to me with other software), Moho handled them with little or no fuss. Any minor issues were quick to fix.

This is probably Moho's most attractive feature for me so far: the freedom to experiment, change my mind and alter things as the animation progresses, without losing any of the work I've already done. Having worked with animation software that takes a rather different approach, I find this freedom of expression genuinely liberating.

The soundtrack was composed using instruments from Rinascimento, a beautiful sample library by Fluffy Audio. I previously used it extensively when composing the music for the interactive children's book Journey to the Iron Castle, and couldn't resist using Henry VIII's story as an excuse to revisit it. This miniature features the archlute, theorbo, alto recorder and Renaissance percussion.


This project was made possible with public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.