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Show and Tell #5: Pivot Stickfigure Animator © 2005. Mark Engelberg I still remember the first time I encountered a flipbook. It was a Pink Panther book I had bought at a yard sale. I remember my awe as I flipped its pages, realizing that animation was merely comprised of a bunch of still images, with small changes in each new image. Flash-forward several years, and I'm watching the making of Empire Strikes Back. I see how they animate the monsters by using miniature models, where each joint is movable. This allows the animators to make a tiny change to a limb, and then shoot a new picture. Flash-forward to today, and you get Pivot Stickfigure Animator, a fun and free tool for exploring the basics of animation, creating your own flipbook-style animations, one limb movement at a time. When you load up Pivot, you see a stickfigure of a person. The stickfigure displays a number of joints. As you use the mouse to drag on various limbs, they move the way you'd expect, because of the joints. You can also move the entire person via a handle at its center. Animation couldn't be simpler. Just click a button to add the current image to your flipbook. Drag a limb a tiny bit (a grayed out version of your previous image makes it easy to see how much you're changing the image), and then click again to add the new image to your flipbook. When you have something you like, just play the animation, and export it to an animated GIF to publish on a webpage. With no instruction or prior animation experience, my kids had constructed their first Pivot animations within a half-hour of using the tool. Above, is an example of one of my son's first animations. Pivot comes with only a handful of stickfigure animals and people, but it also provides a stickfigure editor so you can construct your own.
© 2006
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