Stykz 1.0 To Import Pivot 2 .stk Files!

I'm excited to be able to tell you that Stykz 1.0, when it is released, will include the ability to import Pivot 2 .stk files! This means that Stykz will be able to use thousands of already created .stk files so that animators won't have to recreate work that is easy to download and import.

We are still looking at whether to import Pivot 2 .piv files (or whether to import any Pivot 3 beta files), and if we do so, it won't be until after the 1.0 release for all platforms.

But the ability to import .stk files will be a great benefit to everyone, and it will mean that any Pivot users who choose to use Stykz will be able to bring their sticks with them!

:-D

Stykz Videos on YouTube/Yahoo Videos

We juat posted three videos to YouTube and Yahoo Video, which is basically the full Stykz Intro video separated into three parts. The quality of the videos are not great (although they look pretty good on the iPhone). This is probably because they were recorded at 1440 x 900 resolution, and during the conversion process they lost a lot of quality. So after a couple of days of attempts to get good-looking videos onto YouTube, we finally gave up and added a title slide to each video, directing people back to the main Stykz web site to see them in higher quality.

If anyone has suggestions for making better quality YouTube vids, let me know, as we're going to be recording a bunch of videos in the future.

Thanks!

Merry Stykzmas! Stykz is Finally Released to the Public

Well, it’s been a long period of development, but we finally got a public beta of Stykz out the door and available for you to download. Although “Stykz” is very familiar to *us*, this is probably the first time you’re reading about it. So here’s the backstory on how Stykz came to be developed:

Most of the Stykz testing team had been using Pivot on Windows for a long time, and were happy to work with an animation program that was easy to use. But there were many features that they had wished would be in Pivot, but the author had not updated Pivot since 2006. The lead engineer, however, was a cross-platform Flash and Revolution programmer who was used to hearing these complaints, started looking around for a better application, or one that could work on Macs.

After seeing the popularity of Pivot, and realizing that no one had developed a Mac version of a dedicated stick figure animation (SFA) program, the Stykz team was formed and we became committed to putting out a fun, easy to use SFA program that could be used on ALL platforms. So we decided to start with the Mac version, with the Windows and Linux ones to follow.

The first version of Stykz was designed to be a superset of Pivot, adding many of the features we’d wanted to see added to that program, but using a development tool that would allow us to quickly and easily output Stykz on multiple platforms.

We have great plans for future versions of Stykz (see the FAQ on the Stykz web site for a sampling of these), so make sure to send in your bug reports, comments, and suggestions to us as often as you like. You can use the forums, or send email directly to us from inside Stykz by using the “Send Feedback” menu item in the Help menu.

Enjoy!

The Stykz Development Team