Mosketch by Moka Studio

Quick & Easy 3D Character Animation

Mosketchâ„¢ combines advanced sketching techniques and a powerful inverse kinematics solver to easily and quickly create 3D character animation

Unleash your creativity

With Mosketchâ„¢, you don’t need to build and master complex control rigs. You can focus on what really matters: the artistic side of animation

Animate any 3D Character

Thanks to its generic architecture, Mosketchâ„¢ can animate any 3D character using joints only. Complex control rigs are not needed anymore.

Import your 3D character (a humanoid, a dog, a tyrannosaurus, a tree, a septapus, etc) and start animating immediately using sketching, IK and FK.

Download Beta

(Animated Septapus – Courtesy of Mirouille)

Intuitive sketching

Sketch on your 3D character joints to quickly design key poses, block an animation and establish timing.

Sketch lines of action to add more dynamics and life to your 3D character animations.

Download Beta

(Animating Moska on a Wacom Cintiq 24 HD)

Powerful IK Solver

Pose your 3D character by dragging its limbs. With its unique Up- and Down-influence concepts, Mosketchâ„¢ provides quick and full control on any joint, its parent and its descendants.

In Mosketchâ„¢, you can even create, modify and delete IK chains, of any length, for any joints, at run time. This gives you more freedom to use IK, the way you want, when you want it.

Download Beta

(wall-climbing, 3D character animation using 4 IK end-effectors)

Flexibility

Mosketchâ„¢ forward and inverse kinematics work in parallel so you don’t need to worry about FK/IK switching: you can change seamlessly from one to the other.

Sketch the pose you want, refine it with IK, then FK, then sketch again instead of dragging numerous animation controls around.

Download Beta

Hej Stylus

I haven’t had a chance to play around with this yet but it looks interesting. The idea is that by offsetting your stylus you can get more of a brush stroke. I’m not entirely sure that will do what they claim but you can check it out for yourself easily enough by downloading it and trying it out.

You can learn more here.

Paint & Stick 1.5 for After Effects

This is truly the year of digital 2D animation! Paint & Stick is a plugin for After effects which allows you to animate and draw directly IN After Effects! I have not tried it yet but it looks wonderful! You can download a public beta of Paint & Stick 1.5 here.

Save 40% on the Adobe Creative Cloud until June 3rd

Adobe-Cloud-40-percent-off

Seeing as how Adobe dominates the animation industry, and you can no longer purchase Adobe software outright, I figure this might be of use to some of you out there. Right now until June 3rd you can get 40% off a subscription to the Adobe Cloud. Click here for more info.

You’re welcome! 😉

RubberHose ANIMATION RIGGING WITH REAL FLEXIBILITY

From the site:

RubberHose is the fastest way to rig and animate a character in After Effects. It’s an open system built specifically for handling the frustrating parts of animation while letting you stay in control of your character’s performance and the life you bring to it. You will save time and you will actually enjoy the process. Guaranteed.

http://www.battleaxe.co/rubberhose/

Alternatives to Final Draft

final-draft

Since you can’t very well create animation with a story, you’re gonna need script writing software. Below is a list of 21 alternatives (read: cheaper) to Final Draft. Personally my favorite is Adobe Story mostly because it syncs to The Cloud and allows me to use it on multiple computers but you might have different ideas.

  1. Commercial by Literature & Latte | Mac, Windows, Linux

    Scrivener is a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts such as novels and research papers.


  2. Freemium by Greyfirst Corporation | Mac, Web / Cloud, Android, iPhone, Android Tablet, iPad

    Based on the Firefox engine, supports standards, visual storyboarding, prod. sceduling, publication and international languages MUI support. you can even get a portable version by googling for it. .


  3. Free by Spacejock Software (Simon Haynes) | Windows

    yWriter is a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create.


  4.  Trelby
    Open Source by Trelby.org | Windows, Linux

    Trelby is simple, fast and elegantly laid out to make screenwriting simple. It is infinitely configurable. *


  5. Commercial by Anthemion Software Ltd. | Mac, Windows, Linux

    Write a novel or screenplay with Writers Cafe: a powerful but fun writers environment that includes the StoryLines structuring tool, a notebook, journal, writing quotations, and scrapbook organizer


  6. Freemium by Dimka Novikov | Mac, Windows, Linux

    Simple and powerful application for writing movie scripts.


  7. Free | Mac, Windows, Linux, LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice

    Organon – Navigation and Organization Tool for OpenOffice and LibreOffice


  8. Freemium | Mac, Windows, Linux, Web / Cloud

    Adobe® Story software lets you outline your ideas, write scripts quickly with automatic formatting, and collaborate online.


  9. Free | Web / Cloud

    Plotbot is free screenwriting software. You can write your screenplay with as many or a few people as you want–right from your browser. We handle the formatting so you can concentrate on writing!


  10. Commercial by Mariner Software | Mac

    Storymill is a creative writing tool geared towards book writers; although, it could easily be used for other big creative writing projects, like scripts.


  11. Commercial by Stroyist Software | Mac

    Designed exclusively for Mac OS X, Storyist is a powerful story development tool for novelists and screenwriters.


  12. Free by Guy Goldstein | Web / Cloud

    Collaborative screenwriting for everyone* *Great for solo writers as well!


  13. Commercial by Write Brothers, Inc. | Windows

    Outline 4D is an outlining and writing program that lets you brainstorm, create, structure and organize your ideas.


  14. Commercial by J Nozzi | Mac

    CopyWrite is the award-winning creative writing project management system for Mac OS X.


  15. Commercial by Act Focused Media LLC | Mac

    Slugline is a minimal, distraction-free environment for the most important part of screenwriting—the writing part. Slugline works with plain text.


  16. Commercial | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone, iPad

    Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software is a complete application for writing motion picture screenplays, including tools for outlining, organizing, and navigating, plus extensive screenplay formatting.


  17. Open Source | Windows

    Page 2 Stage is screenwriting software designed expressly for people writing screenplays, scripts, and plays. It provides numerous features needed by screenwriters not found in standard word processors.


  18. Commercial by Cinovation | Mac, Windows

    Scriptware scriptwriting software, for writing scripts faster and easier than ever. Screenplay software for script writers.

  19. Commercial by Quote-Unquote Apps | Mac

    *** 2013 Macworld Eddy Winner! – Best of 2013 *** With Highland, crafting a perfectly-formatted screenplay is as simple as writing an email. Just type. Highland will make it look good.


  20. Commercial by blankpageapp | Web / Cloud

    Helps writers become authors. BlankPage is a full writing environment with a minimalist text editor, a powerful outlining tool, and social features all centered around motivational cues to help you keep writing.

    BlankPage gives you detailed statistics about when and how you write. Intelligent reminders for when you should write and a never ending stream of inspirational content to help you get going.

  21. Commercial | Windows

    Word processor specifically for screenplays.