Stick figure animation with Pivot

June 7, 2006

Filed under: Graphics — Rxbbx @ 3:42 pm

I am fan of those little stick figures. I always wondered how people made those little gif animations. It isn’t that hard. I surfed a while and found some interesting free software. It’s called Pivot Stickfigure Animator, from Peter Bone.

You can load a sample background, edit / create stick figures, save the animation as a *.piv file to modify it later and view in Pivot, and / or as a *.GIF file to view it on your computer and post on the internet.

Another option would be Photoshop:

  1. Open a photoshop document (e.g. 150×75px)
  2. Create a layer
  3. Use the pencil tool and draw a character
  4. Set layer opacity to 20%
  5. Create a new layer
  6. Pencil next frame on there, using the previous layer as a guide
  7. Set the previous layer back to 100% and make it invisible
  8. Set current layer opacity to 20%

You can create a new layer, another new layer until you have your animation like you want.

You can then convert it straight into imageready and make your animation by showing each layer frame by frame. Use the 0.06 fps. Save the optimized gif at 4 colors to keep the file size small.

4 Comments »

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  1. Another possible way to do this is using Flash with motion tweening.

    Comment by Weston Campbell — June 8, 2006 @ 12:41 pm

  2. You are right, i focused too much on photoshop and pivot. I didn’t try it with flash. Do you get better animations. Worth trying?

    Comment by rxbbx — June 8, 2006 @ 5:43 pm

  3. were can we animate more then 1 person???????

    Comment by chris — June 15, 2006 @ 12:59 am

  4. You have to load a character with pivot.

    Download Mirror: Pivot

    Comment by rxbbx — June 16, 2006 @ 12:20 am

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