Like you, I use
After Effects for compositing my Moho layers. My first Moho short film
Scareplane, however, was comped in
Blackmagic Design Fusion (similar to
Nuke, which I use with Ae at my workplace.) For 2D cartoon stuff, I tend to prefer Ae. Either compositing program works well, but they each have their strengths and weaknesses, so it depends on the scene's requirements. Moho's
Layer Comps window and
Moho Exporter work very well together when you need to render for compositing.
For painted elements for Moho, I typically use
Adobe Photoshop, but I sometimes use
Krita and
Clip Studio. Moho is optimized for Photoshop's layered PSD, but it works well with the others, too. Regardless, you will want a paint program for Moho, so get one that supports layered PSD. If you don't have one yet, Krita and
Photopea are free options.
I also use
Procreate on iPad for creating bitmaps. I love using Procreate but it's a small hassle to send files between two platforms.
For vector art, I work 95% in Moho, but I may use
Adobe Illustrator for technical stuff. A lot of the motion graphics I animated for
Fast and Furious: Spy Racers were drawn in AI and animated in Moho or After Effects (sometimes both in the same scenes.)
Sometimes, I integrate 3D elements with Moho too, but the renders are merged in compositing or in the 3D program. For 3D, I mainly use
LightWave and
Blender, and sometimes
Maya. (LightWave is inexpensive and Blender is free. I use all three at my workplace.)
For frame-by-frame elements, I had been using
Adobe Animate, and I would import the renders to Moho or a compositing program, but after Moho 14.1 came out, I'm mainly using Moho's FBF tools. The recent improvements in Moho 14.1 to the Freehand tool and FBF workflow made a difference for me. I'll still use Animate or TV Paint for complicated FBF, but Moho's new FBF tools have worked perfectly for what I've needed lately.
For photo elements, you can't beat the convenience of an
iPhone, but you'll want to get any kind of digital camera.
For productions involving multiple scenes, you'll want to get a video editing program. I like
Vegas Pro, but for basic short film editing, any video editor will do.
I also like these support tools. They're cheap and handy with any animation program:
- Epic Pen (screen marker program)
- PureRef (reference viewer)
- DJV (player for reviewing image sequences. Especially useful for EXR output, but works well with PNG too.)