The basics
From nothing to a finished video: the editor, posing, frames, timing and easing, onion skin, playback, saving and exporting. No experience needed.
- An animation is a row of poses called frames. You pose Blue, press A to add a frame, pose again, and press Space to play.
- A new frame plays for just 1/24 of a second. Raise Inbetweens to make a pose last longer, and set Easing to Auto to make Blue glide instead of snap.
- Ctrl+S saves your project as a .styk file you can keep editing. Export turns it into a video or GIF anyone can watch.
Jump to
How animation works
An animation is a row of still pictures called frames. When the frames are shown quickly, one after another, your eyes see movement. StykAnimate works the same way: you pose a stick figure in each frame, and the app plays the frames back.
How quickly the frames are shown is the frame rate, counted in frames per second (fps). Try it: slow the frames below right down, then speed them up.
- Choose Slideshow. At 2 fps you see separate pictures.
- Choose Smooth. At 24 fps the same pictures become a jump.
- Click a frame card to stop on that picture.
StykAnimate plays 24 frames per second unless you change it. You don’t have to draw all 24: you pose the moments that matter, and the app can fill the time between them. You’ll see how in step 8.
Open StykAnimate
Use the desktop app on Windows or Linux, or the browser version. Everything on this page works the same way in both.
Windows or Linux. Free, and the Windows Setup keeps itself up to date.
Download In your browserNothing to install. Works best on a computer with a mouse or pen.
Open the editorStykAnimate opens straight into the editor with a new, empty animation. There is nothing to set up: a stick figure called Blue is already standing on the stage, ready to pose.
The first time, the desktop app may show What’s new: click Start animating to close it. It may also ask you to Help shape StykAnimate by sharing usage reports. Accept and Reject are both fine; your animations are never part of the reports.
To start another new animation later, press Ctrl+N or choose File → New animation.
Meet the editor
The editor has six parts. Point at a part of the window below, or click a number, to see what it is for.
Press Ctrl+P and type what you want, like “onion” or “export”. The command palette finds any command, setting, layer or figure.
The dots on a figure
A stick figure is a chain of lines joined by dots called handles. You pose a figure by dragging its handles, and their colours tell you what each one does. If you’ve used Pivot, you already know them.
- Red: a joint of the selected figure. Drag it to pose.
- Orange: the origin. Drag it to move the whole figure.
- Blue: a figure that is not selected. Click it to select it.
- A blue ring around a red dot means IK is on: drag that hand or foot and the elbow or knee bends by itself.
- White: a joined point. Another figure or prop is attached there and follows it.
To select a figure, click it. To select nothing, click an empty part of the stage. Point at any dot below and the stage tells you what it is.
- Click the purple figure. Its dots turn red and orange, and Blue’s turn blue.
- Click an empty part of the stage. Nothing is selected, so every dot is blue.
- Drag an orange dot to move a whole figure.
- Drag the hand holding the staff. The white dot keeps the staff attached.
- Press Shift+J, or click the joints button above the stage, to hide the dots. Do it again to show them.
Pose Blue
Posing is dragging dots. This Blue behaves just like the one in the app, so try each move as you read about it.
- Drag a red dot. The line swings around the dot above it and keeps its length.
- Drag a hand or a foot. The elbow or knee bends by itself to reach.
- Drag the orange dot to move the whole of Blue. X and Y in Properties change as you go.
- Made a mistake? Press Ctrl+Z to undo the last drag.
- Drag an elbow or knee. The hand or foot comes along.
- Drag a hand. The elbow bends by itself.
- Drag the orange dot to move Blue. Watch X and Y change.
- Hold Ctrl and drag a dot to stretch.On a touch screen, turn on Hold Ctrl above.
- Press Ctrl+Z to undo.
Drag a joint to turn a limb
The line swings around the dot above it and keeps its length. Everything further along comes too: turn an upper arm and the forearm and hand follow.
Hands and feet bend the whole limb
Drag Blue’s hand and the elbow bends to reach it, like a real arm. This is called IK (inverse kinematics). A blue ring around a dot tells you it is on. Blue has it on both hands and both feet.
Hold Ctrl to stretch
Hold Ctrl while you drag a dot to make its line longer or shorter. Drag back near the original length and it snaps to it exactly.
Right-drag to bend
Drag a dot with the right mouse button to curve its line, which is great for bendy arms and tails. A right-click without dragging opens the menu instead.
Hold R to move a single point
Normally a dot drags the lines after it along. Hold R while you drag and only that one point moves: the lines on both sides stretch to follow. Try it on the orange dot to make Blue crouch while his head and feet stay where they are.
Undo anything
Every drag is one step you can take back.
You grabbed the orange dot. Press Ctrl+Z, then grab a red one. Stretched a limb by accident? Hold Ctrl and drag it back until it snaps, or undo.
Move around the stage
Zoom in to grab small dots, then step back to see the whole scene. Moving the view never changes your animation.
- Zoom: point at what you want to see and hold Ctrl while you scroll. The zoom percentage in the stage header changes.
- Pan (slide the view): hold Space and drag, or just scroll.
- See everything again: press Shift+1, or click the Fit canvas button at the right end of the stage header.
- Hold Ctrl and scroll over Blue to zoom in. Or press =.
- Hold Space and drag to pan. On a touch screen, drag with two fingers.
- Click Make Blue run off-screen above, then press Shift+2 to find him.
- Press Shift+1, or click the fit button, to see the whole scene.
- Click the zoom percentage and choose 200%.
Click the stage, press Ctrl+A to select every figure, then Shift+2. The view jumps to them, even to ones far off-stage. More in Move around the canvas.
Make your first animation
Here is the whole recipe: pose, add a frame, pose again. Repeat, then play it. First, switch the timeline to the view made for this.
New projects open with the Advanced timeline. Click Simple at the left end of the timeline header. Simple shows one card per frame, like Pivot. Simple and Advanced are two views of the same animation, so you can switch any time and lose nothing. The app remembers your choice.
- Pose Blue for the first moment of your animation. Your changes go into the frame whose card is highlighted.
- Press A, or click Add frame in the timeline header. A copy of your pose appears as a new card right after the current one, and the new card is highlighted.
- Change the pose a little.
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 a few times.
- Press Space to play. Press it again to stop.
- Pose Blue for frame 1.
- Press A to add frame 2.
- Change the pose on frame 2.
- Add frame 3 and pose it too.
- Press Space to play it.
- Too fast? Click a frame card and raise Inbetweens.
Point at the stage first, so the keys go to this playground and not the page.
Why does it play so fast?
Look at the frame cards. Each card says how many inbetweens it has: how many extra frames of time its pose lasts before the next one. A new project starts with one frame holding 9 inbetweens, so it lasts 10 frames: 0.42 seconds at 24 fps.
When you press A, the new frame takes over those 9 inbetweens, and the frame before it drops to 0. A frame with 0 inbetweens is on screen for just one frame, 1/24 of a second. So your first poses flash past, and only the last one stays a while. That is normal. You decide how long each pose lasts, and the next step shows how.
Click a card and raise Inbetweens in the frame bar, at the left of the timeline. With 5 inbetweens, a pose lasts 6 frames, a quarter of a second. You can also lower the frame rate (fps) in the timeline header, but that slows down everything.
Change a frame later
Click a frame’s card, then pose. Your changes go into that frame only; the others stay as they were. To get rid of a frame, click its card and click the bin in the frame bar. To repeat a pose, click its card and click Copy. Then click the card it should come before and click Paste: the copy goes in at that card’s place, with its inbetweens.
Press A while you are still dragging a dot. StykAnimate adds a frame and you keep posing without letting go.
Smooth or snappy?
Two settings in the frame bar decide how your animation moves: Inbetweens decides how long each pose lasts, and Easing decides what happens during that time. Both work on the cards you have selected.
- Select the frames. Click the first card, then hold Shift and click the last one. All the cards in between are selected too.
- Set Inbetweens with − and +, or type a number. The bar under each card grows, and the frame bar says how long the pose holds.
- Open Easing and choose Auto. Play: Blue now glides from pose to pose instead of jumping.
- Click card 1, then Shift-click card 3 to select all three.
- Set Inbetweens to 6. Each pose now lasts a quarter of a second.
- Set Easing to Auto. Blue glides between the poses.
- Try Linear and Ease out and watch how the faint copies spread out.
- Drag the bar under one card to change that frame alone.
If you made frames in step 7, this playground uses them. The faint copies are the in-between frames; their spacing shows the speed.
Make a pose last longer
Every frame card has a bar under it that shows how long its pose lasts. Drag the end of the bar, or use Inbetweens in the frame bar. More inbetweens means a slower, longer move. The frame bar shows the result in seconds, for example holds 0.25 s, and the length of the whole animation, for example 1.2 s in all.
For a punch, give the wind-up a few inbetweens and the hit only one or two: the fast hit is what makes it feel strong. For a character thinking, let a pose hold for 12 or more.
Let the app draw the motion in between
New frames use Constant easing: the pose simply stays still for its inbetweens, then snaps to the next one, like classic stick animation. Choose another easing and StykAnimate moves Blue from pose to pose during the inbetweens.
- Constant: holds the pose, then snaps to the next one.
- Auto: a smooth move that starts and ends gently. The best place to start.
- Linear: the same speed the whole way. Good for machines, a bit robotic for people.
- Ease in starts slowly and speeds up; Ease out starts fast and slows down into the next pose.
- Bezier: a curve you can shape yourself. Double-click a card to edit its easing curve.
The easing of a card decides the move from that card to the next one. The last card has nothing to move to, so its easing does not change anything.
Inbetweens work like Pivot’s once easing is Auto or Linear. With Constant, they simply hold the pose. If your animation looks choppy, this is almost always why.
In the Advanced timeline the same animation looks different: each card becomes a dot called a key, a pose that holds still shows as a grey bar, and a pose that moves to the next shows as a violet bar. Read Simple and Advanced timelines when you are ready for it.
Onion skin
Onion skin shows faded copies of the poses around the one you are on: red for the poses before, blue for the poses after. It helps you keep each new pose close to the last one, so the motion looks smooth. It is on when you open the app.
- Turn it on or off with O, or the onion button near the right end of the timeline header.
- Open its settings with the small arrow next to that button. Before and After set how many frames back and ahead it looks for poses, and Opacity how strong the ghosts are.
- Press O to turn onion skin off, then on again.
- Press . or click the ruler to go to another frame. The ghosts follow.
- Open the settings with the arrow next to the onion button, and raise Before to 4.
- Drag Opacity to make the ghosts stronger.
This playground shows the Advanced timeline. Onion skin works the same way in Simple.
Ghosts only help you while you edit: they never appear in an exported video. To learn every setting, read Onion skin.
Play it back
The controls in the middle of the timeline header work like a video player. Point at the player below and try the keys.
- Play and pause: tap Space, or click the round play button.
- Step one frame: press , for the previous frame and . for the next one.
- Jump to the start or the end: press Home or End.
- Loop: the loop button repeats the animation. Turn it off to play it once.
- Press Space to play, and again to pause.
- Press . a few times to step through the wave.
- Press Home, then End.
- Turn Loop off and play: it stops at the end.
- Type 12 in the fps box and play. Everything is half as fast.
Space has two jobs: tap it to play or pause, hold it and drag to pan the stage. The time reads minutes : seconds : frames, so 00:01:12 means 1 second and 12 frames. The fps box sets how many frames play each second (24 for a new project). A lower number makes everything slower; a higher one makes it faster.
Save your project
Saving keeps your animation as a .styk file, which you can open and keep editing later: frames, figures, effects and sound are all in it.
- Press Ctrl+S, or click Save in the top bar.
- The first time, choose a name and a folder. In the browser version the file is downloaded instead.
- Check the top bar. Next to your project’s name, Edited means there are changes that are not saved yet. Saved with a green dot means everything is in the file.
My first animationSaved- Drag one of Blue’s dots. The top bar says Edited.
- Press Ctrl+S or click Save. It says Saved.
- Change something, wait 3 seconds, then click Simulate a crash.
- Click Restore to get your work back.
If StykAnimate closes unexpectedly, your work is not lost. While you work, the app keeps a recovery copy of unsaved changes every 2.5 seconds. The next time you open it, a message at the top of the stage says Restore unsaved work in My first animation from 12:04? Click Restore, then save.
Recovery copies are a safety net, not your project file. In the browser they live in the browser’s storage, which the browser can clear. Save with Ctrl+S to keep a copy that is truly yours. You can change how often recovery copies are made in Settings → Animation → Recovery.
Export your animation
Saving keeps your project editable. Exporting turns it into a video, a GIF or pictures that anyone can watch, without StykAnimate.
- Click Export at the right end of the top bar, or press Ctrl+Shift+E. The Export window opens, with a preview on the left.
- Click a tile in Quick presets for where you will share it, for example YouTube or Chat GIF. It fills in every setting below it.
- Check the Name, then click the button at the bottom right. It says what it makes, like Export MP4. Choose where to save the file.
Export
Quick presets
Plays everywhere: phones, YouTube, social apps and video editors.
Sharp, with a sensible file size. Right for most uses.
- Click the YouTube tile. Size becomes 1080p and Quality Max.
- Click TikTok and read the note: a wide scene plays with bars.
- Choose GIF as the Format. The button now says Export GIF.
- Click the Export button at the bottom right.
- Video (MP4) is for YouTube, phones and social apps. WebM is another video type for web pages.
- GIF loops forever and plays right inside chats like Discord. It has no sound, so export a video if your animation has sound.
- Frames saves every frame as a picture (PNG, JPEG or SVG), for example to finish your animation in a video editor.
- Project saves a copy for other animation programs, such as a Pivot .piv file. It is not your .styk project: save that with Ctrl+S.
Presets never change the shape of your scene, so a wide scene exported for TikTok or Shorts gets bars above and below. To fill a phone screen, make the scene tall first: click an empty part of the stage and set Width and Height in Properties, for example 1080 × 1920.
Every format, size and quality option is explained in Export.
Your cheat sheet
The keys you will use every day. Press one on your keyboard and its card lights up.
Every shortcut can be changed in Settings → Shortcuts. Press ? in the app to see the full list. On a Mac, use Cmd wherever this page says Ctrl.
Quick check
Five questions to lock it in. No pressure: a wrong answer just tells you why.
You want to move Blue to the other side of the stage. Which dot do you drag?
The orange dot is the origin: it moves the whole figure. Red dots pose, and Ctrl stretches.
Which key adds a new frame?
A adds a frame with a copy of your pose. Space plays and pauses.
You made four frames, and they flash past almost too fast to see. What do you change?
A new frame has 0 inbetweens, so it lasts only 1/24 of a second. More inbetweens make each pose last longer.
Your animation snaps from pose to pose. How do you make it glide?
New frames use Constant easing, which holds each pose. Auto moves smoothly between poses during the inbetweens.
You want to share a short loop in a Discord chat. What do you make?
A GIF plays right in the chat. A .styk file is your editable project; people need StykAnimate to open it.
You know the basics. Time to make something.
Where to next
You can already make a complete animation. These guides take each part further.
Still stuck?
Ask the community, or tell us what’s missing from the docs.