Animal Crossing remains one of the most popular Nintendo franchises in recent years, with New Horizons trailing only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in sales for the Switch (see Switch 2 prices if you're after the latest console) The influence of the anthropomorphic social sim already made it to the big screen in the 2006 anime Gekijōban Dōbutsu no Mori, but it was ripe for more interpretations.
So it is that an Animal Crossing song turned out to the festive treat we didn't know we needed this past Christmas. And now we've got a behind-the scenes glimpse at how it was made using a program that tops our guide to the best animation software.
The Animal Crossing song was produced for Random Encounters, a YouTube channel dedicated to video game musicals (yep, really. They've done everything from Castlevania to Five Nights at Freddy's and Slay The Princess!)
Caper of the Bells was written by Random Encounters and features Adriana Figueroa, CG5 and The Stupendium, and it's accompanied by adorable 2D animation that sees Isabelle solve a robbery at Nook's Cranny and catch the culprit.
The art direction, rigging and animation was done by Marline Animates and the Polish 2D animator Monika Likus using Moho. Style dev and backgrounds were handled by Ola Bylica and compositing by @meowkarii.
The videos below provide a behind-the-scenes look at how they used tools available in Moho to rig and animate characters with precision and efficiency. That includes practical examples of Liquid Shapes, Curvers and Meshes along with Inverse Kinematics and Forward Kinematics for bone movement are methods for controlling bone movement and Vitruvian Bones, which allow animators to swap between different sets of bones and associated artwork on a single character.
For more animation inspiration, see the Disney principles of animation and the Pixar rules of storytelling.
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