Pivot Stickfigure Animator

2000

Date: August 2000 · Place: Bideford, Devon, England · Figures: Peter Bone, programmer · Newgrounds stick-animator scene, audience · Tags: Tool, Newgrounds, Stick 01. A 14-Year-Old Ships a Tool Peter Bone, a teenager in Devon, writes Pivot Stickfigure Animator in Visual Basic and releases the freeware in August 2000. It does one thing: drag stick-figure joints between frames and export a GIF. No timeline, no tweening, no learning curve. The tool reaches the Newgrounds crowd within months. Suddenly any 12-year-old can produce a passable fight scene without owning Flash, without learning vectors, without paying Macromedia. 02. An Entire Genre From One .exe Stickdeath, Xiao Xiao knockoffs, sword duels, gun battles, infinite ragdoll loops. By 2003 a third of front-page Newgrounds Flash includes Pivot-exported sequences. The aesthetic is so identifiable that animators brag about NOT using Pivot. Pivot is the first creation tool aimed squarely at children that produces a global meme genre. It predicts Scratch, Roblox Studio, TikTok templates: lower the floor, the kids will fill the ceiling. Sources • Pivot Animator official site, version history • KnowYourMeme, Pivot Animator • Newgrounds Wiki, Stick Figure Animation