Hey everyone. Well, this week went by pretty fast. (Of course, school is over, that’s why…)
Anyway, time for today’s topic, Pivot Stickfigure Animator. For those of you that always wanted to try out animation in flash but couldn’t, whether it be because you can’t afford it, or because you don’t want to download such a big program, or because you just don’t think you’ll understand how to use the program, etc, etc, well, listen up. Pivot Stickfigure Animator is nothing like flash. For beginners, it is 100 times easier to use. As you’ll see from the screenshot below, it is one of the most simple programs you’ll ever use in your life.
Everytime you startup pivot, you’re greeted with the same goofy-looking default stickfigure. You can use him in all of your animations if you want, or you could use these files called .stk ’s (commonly called sticks). Stk files are specifil lil’ files that hold a stick figure in them that can be opened and used in pivot. There are literally thousands of them availabe all over the internet for download, but if you’re feeling more creative, you can easily make your own in pivot.
When I say stickfigure, most of you guys think of a skinny four-limbed thing like above, well, that’s not entirely right. In pivot, a stick / .stk can be a ‘person’, a weapon, a vehicle, a background, an animal, a banana, a piano, etc, etc. These .stk ’s are what you use to create your animations in pivot.
As you can see above, all .stk ’s have little red dots on them, mostly you’ll find these on the joints of the figure. These are the sticks pivot points (see where the program gets its name?). You will rotate and move these points and this will give the illusion that the stick is moving. And, well, that’s how you animate in pivot. This is the main reason why it is so simple to use, unlike flash, all you have available to you in pivot are sticks and their pivot points - that’s about it.
Well Ralph, if that’s all you have available to you to animate with, pivot doesn’t seem like a worth-while download to me.
Wrong you silly little monkey. If used properly, pivot can produce some of the most amazing animations you’ll ever see on the internet. Here, let me show you one of the more well-animated ones from youtube…
Duty Calls 2 by Bert
With no real “official” homepage to pivot, Droidz.org is where all the pivot-eer’s seem to head. Droidz has tons and TONS of .stk’s ready for download as well as one of the most popular pivot forums on the internet. DarkDemon.org is also a very successful pivot community as well.
Want Pivot?
Want to download Pivot StickFigure animator? Here are the two links to 3.0 Beta and the stable 2.2.5 release.
Pivot 2.2.5 - I recommend this download, as it is the stable release.
Pivot 3 BETA - Very buggy.
August 11, 2008 @ 11:36 am.
HEy, cool page. I learned something even though I already use the program!