Moho

What is Moho?

Moho is a 2D animation program that started life in 1999 as a small indie tool created by Mike Clifton, and it quietly grew into one of the most capable rigging-based animation packages you can buy. The software was sold for years as Anime Studio under Smith Micro, then the original team took it back and rebranded it Moho in 2021.

The heart of Moho is bones. You draw a character, or import one, then build a skeleton inside it. Move a bone and the artwork bends along with it, which lets you animate a full character by posing a handful of controllers instead of redrawing every frame. That workflow is called cutout or puppet animation, and Moho is one of the best tools in the world at it.

Moho ships in two editions: the affordable Debut for beginners and the full Pro edition with advanced rigging like Smart Bones and physics. Both share the same friendly interface, so you can start small and grow into the professional features.

Key Features

• Bone rigging with Smart Bones that keep shapes clean as joints bend
• Vector drawing tools with smooth, resolution-independent strokes
• Frame-by-frame tools for hand-drawn animation alongside rigged puppets
• Switch layers for easily swapping character parts and expressions
• Built-in physics for hair, cloth, tails and other secondary motion
• Particles, image effects and a full timeline with keyframes
• Import from Photoshop, SVG and image sequences
• Render to MP4, GIF and image sequences with alpha channels

How to get started

Head to moho.lostmarble.com and download the free trial of either edition. Moho runs on Windows and macOS, and the trial is fully functional so you can follow along with tutorials before paying anything.

Start with the included characters and tutorials. Open a character, select the bones, and drag them around to get a feel for how the rig works. Then draw your own character and use the Auto Bone feature or the manual bone tools to rig it.

• Download the trial from the official site
• Work through the built-in tutorial characters
• Draw or import a character and rig it with bones
• Animate with keyframes on the timeline
• Render your animation to video

Use cases

• Cartoons and animated shorts for YouTube and streaming
• Explainer videos and educational content
• TV animation and studio production work
• Character animation for games and apps
• Music videos and motion graphics
• Whiteboard-style presentations and training films

Pricing and licensing

Moho uses a classic perpetual license model: you pay once and own the software, with paid upgrades available when major versions launch. Moho Debut targets beginners at a budget price, while Moho Pro includes the full rigging arsenal for professionals.

There are no subscriptions and no mandatory cloud services, which is a big deal for animators who dislike rental pricing. Student discounts and upgrade pricing appear from time to time, so check the official website for current figures.

Pros and cons

Moho's strengths are its bone system, its one-time price and its gentle learning curve compared with heavy studio packages. Smart Bones solve the classic problem of elbows and knees collapsing during rotation, and the community shares rigs, tutorials and character packs freely.

The trade-offs: the vector tools are good but not as deep as dedicated illustration apps, and Moho lacks the massive plugin ecosystem of bigger competitors. Some studios also find the interface dated compared with Toon Boom Harmony, though the latest versions have modernized it considerably.

Alternatives

• OpenToonz: free and open source, used by Studio Ghibli
• Toon Boom Harmony: the industry standard for TV and film animation
• Adobe Animate: familiar to Flash veterans, part of Creative Cloud
• Cartoon Animator: Reallusion's beginner-friendly puppet animation tool
• Synfig: free vector animation built around tweening
• Pencil2D: lightweight and free for hand-drawn animation