When I created the first Flash-based animation in my life (in 1998), it was a pure proof of concept, to find out how much work it would be to create animated episodes similar to what Mondo Media was publishing on the web back in the day (also using Flash, they had shows like Heavy Metal Guy, ). I put together a quick & dirty story and ran with it. Here’s an mp4 export of the two micro episodes that survived the Y2k disaster ;-)

The two characters are voiced by me with a little bit of audio magic. Phungus (blonde guy) was the more quirky one, while Mowld was more laid back and serious. I never got around making a full series, though.

Evolution of Mowld

When I considered reviving the duo a while ago, I initially intended to create only slightly updated versions of the two characters. Then I had the idea that Mowld could be a spy or a secret agent, and he’d try to look innocuous by always dressing like a tourist in a Hawaii-shirt. Maybe he could have a codename like “the tourist” or “traveler”.

But somehow this wouldn’t really click with me. Then rethinking the spy or special agent character I thought a bald head and sunglasses would be more badass. That could be my new Mowld. He initially looked like this:

Trying to animate more complex characters turns out to be quite difficult, if you want to use mainly one drawing with smart bones for everything. So I eventually resorted back to KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) and tried to figure out how could I make this character super minimalistic yet still unique. The below paper figure was my new starting point…

I went through a few iterations all accompanied by hours of rigging, IK bone setup in Moho and trying to figure out how to animate the guy. I turns out too many overlapping items (jacket, collar, belt, buttons, etc.) can make this really complicated if you want to use one main rig for 90% of the animation of the main character.