Pivot Animator is a freeware application that allows users to create stick-figure and sprite animations, and save them in the animated GIF format for use on web pages and the AVI format. Pivot provides a simple, easy to use interface with a few features. It uses fixed-length 'sticks' to ensure size consistency during animation.
Peter Bone began programming when he was around 15 years old in IBM BASIC. Bone's father taught some basics and then the rest. He made some very simple games but learnt all of the basics of programming. Later, Bone did an engineering degree. Bone had the idea around 2001. Bone's step brother was attempting to create stickman animations using MS Paint. Bone would draw a stickman, save the file and then draw it again slightly moved and repeat. Bone would then use some video editing software to combine the frames into a movie. Apart from taking a very long time, one of the problems was keeping the proportions of the stickman constant. Peter Bone thought there must be an easier way but he couldn’t find anything online apart from very complex and expensive animation software such as Flash. A couple of months later the first version of Pivot was born. The name was created when he first saved the project after creating one line pivoting on another line and the name stuck. Bone then began uses Delphi to create his own programs named Pivot Animator.
First release
The first version of Pivot Animator had several software bugs. Stick figures were limited to one type of stick figure, the default stick figure. Animations could be saved in the PIV or exported as Animated.GIFs. Users were given few options of image optimization, compression or resizing when saving their animation. This was one of the first animation programs available on the computer.
Pivot 2.2
The second major release of the Pivot Stickfigure Animator. This version implemented the 'Stick Figure Builder', which allowed users to create their own stick figure designs saved in the STK format. This allowed a much wider scope of animation choice for Pivot users. It also fixed a few minor bugs, added the buttons to the main interface to bring a stick figure in front or behind other figures, and could automatically check to make sure the user didn't lose any unsaved projects.
Pivot 3.1 Beta
This release was sent intentionally to the Pivot Animation groups for testing but the Beta was leaked from various unofficial sources to the general public. There was an improved interface, with new icons, a better default stickman with bolder arms and legs and a reorganization of the features. New features included the ability to import any image as a to be moved around in the animation like a stick figure. Another added feature was the ability to have multiple backgrounds in an animation. When a user saves a.piv file, the frame rate is saved with it.
Pivot 4.1
Pivot 4.1 beta was released on January 2, 2013, with new features including.
Pivot Animator 4.1.10 was released as the "stable" version of 4.1 and is still the latest non-beta version so far. Pivot 4.2 was announced on December 23, 2014 followed by a beta release on January 1, 2015. New features include copying and pasting selected stick figures and sprites, a transparent figure builder window, and the ability to export images in the Scalable Vector Graphics format.
