Moho vs. Animate CC (Which One Should You Use?)

If you’re looking into producing animated content, there’s a wide array of software and techniques to explore. Two popular 2D animation programs - Moho and Adobe Animate CC, have a lot in common, but differ in some key ways.

In this post we'll look at the differences so you can determine which better suits your goals or way of working.

In other words: Moho vs. Animate CC. Which one should you use?

Use Cases

Moho

The big hook of Moho is it’s ease of use for creating reusable 2D rigs with a tremendous amount of control. This makes it great for TV shows, web series and even for creating video game animation.

Moho goes all in on its vector rigged characters, and neglects other hand-drawn features. While it does have the option to do hand drawn animation, it’s very limited.

While it’s not an industry standard animation software, it has been used in Oscar nominated feature films:

Animate CC

Animate CC also offers the ability to do hand drawn frame-by-frame animation (though Animate’s drawing tools don’t look or feel as natural.

But Animate CC also makes it easy to do limited animation where individual pieces of the character can be swapped, and puppet animation where a character rig can be posed without redrawing it.

The option to use these time saving techniques in addition to frame-by-frame animation makes it much better suited to productions with a lower budget and tight schedule like TV and web series.

Animate CC, back when it was still called Flash, used to be the only practical way of creating animation for the web. Now, Animate’s ease of use and low barrier to entry continues to make it a goto for independent animators producing content for Youtube.

YouTubers who use Adobe Animate (Flash):

Alan Becker (Check out his animation course)

TheOdd1sOut

Jaiden Animation

Adobe Animate has also been used to create TV animation as well.

Great looking shows made using Adobe Animate (Flash):

Moho vs. Animate CC: Main differences

Moho:

Reusable characters
Content with a very tight schedule
Powerful Character Rigs

Animate CC:

Narrative Animations
Interactive Web Content
Puppet Characters or Hand Drawn Animation.

Learning Curve

Moho

Moho prides itself for being intuitive, and they have made an effort to make rigging a much less daunting task, but there’s still a lot to learn to best implement their tools.

While the more simple rigs are easy to set up, you’ll have to dig deep to use all of its smart tools for creating more complex rigs.

Animate CC

Adobe Animate is generally considered one of the easier animation programs of it’s kind to learn.

There’s a lot of techniques to learn in order to best make use of Animate’s features, and the vector-based drawing tools will take some getting used to, but the basic interface and workflow for making animation is generally intuitive and easy to pickup.

Art Tools

Moho

Moho focuses on vector drawing tools. While it does have bitmap drawing capabilities, you’re more likely to import bitmap artwork drawn in another program.

Most of the tools you’ll probably use are the rigging tools, which work great for both vector and bitmap art.

Animate CC

Adobe Animate is very much the opposite of TV paint when it comes to drawing. It has a series of vector drawing tools for creating crisp, scalable, artwork with a low file size, and relatively low memory usage.

If you’re used to drawing with a bitmap drawing program like Photoshop or Procreate, it can take some getting used to.

If you’re afraid that vector tools are too clunky for character animation, know that tools in Adobe Animate work differently from those in Adobe Illustrator for example and are much better suited for free hand drawing.

Animation Features

Frame-by-Frame Animation

If you want the ability to draw animation frame-by-frame, Animate CC is definitely the way to go. Animate, at its core, is about using digital tools to create individual frames of animation.

Moho does have frame-by-frame capabilities, though it’s not its strong suit.

Rigging Character Puppets

Moho’s biggest selling point is its rigging capabilities. It features a wide variety of advanced rigging tools that allows for both an intuitive simple rigging process, and an advanced complex rigging pipeline if needed.

Its unique Smart Bone system is the easiest way to make rigged characters that feel more hand drawn.

The character rigging features of Animate CC are fairly basic, but it’s easy to start working with them and build a character you can work with fairly quickly.

Other Factors

Moho has many effects that can be applied to your layers and drawing elements that let you do things like add shadows and color modifications.

It can be unintuitive to figure out how to achieve the effect you’re going for since different effects are applied from different places in the interface. Many effects can’t be rendered live in your canvas view so you’ll need to do a lot of preview renders to see how your effects look.

One big feature that differentiates Animate CC from basically any other animation software, is that Animate has the ability to publish content for the web. You can create HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, and SVG animations using Adobe Animate.

This includes making animations with interactivity like for ads or games. So if that’s your goal you should go with Animate.

Cost

Moho is available in two versions: Moho Debut and Moho Pro.

Moho Pro is what we recommend using. The key features that makes the Pro version worth the upgrade are Smart Bones and Smart Warp. These tools are what makes Moho’s rigging so great, and are highly recommended.

There’s also things like size limits and 3D object support that make Pro much better suited for doing serious animation work.

	Debut	Pro
Moho	$59.99	$399.99/mo

Animate CC is only available through Adobe’s Creative Cloud Subscription model. Animate CC can be purchased by itself, or as part of the ALL Adobe Apps package

	Monthly Plan	Annual Plan (paid Monthly)	Annual Plan (pre-paid)
Animate CC	$31.49/mo	$20.99/mo	$239.88/yr
ALL Adobe Apps	$79.49/mo	$52.99/mo	$599.88/yr

Moho vs. Animate CC - How do you choose?

Who won the Moho vs. Animate CC fight?

Choose Moho if you’re interested in doing rigged-puppet animation and want to be able to achieve impressive, above average results with a below average learning curve.

Go with Animate CC if you want a simple way to get started with animation, or if you are looking for ways to save time and money by employing limited animation or puppet rigged characters in addition to frame-by-frame animation.