Hi guys, I'm a fellow pixelartist and also a programmer. I'm launching closed testing of a new tool for pixel artists which allows anyone to

1) pixel paint anything in my Paint tool, let's call them "actors". You use the standard pencil, floodfill, copy & paste etc. Basically you add "actions" to your actors and add "frames" into actions (frames of animation of course).

2) you click "finish" and your actor is available in the Animate app. In Animate, you add your actors to stage, drag them around(this records the animation as you move them around) and switch their actions (talk, sit, move). You can also add chat bubbles, flip along Y axis (for left/right walking) and so on.

3) you can export your movie to YouTube in one click (it uploads your movie to our & optionally your YouTube channel).

The concept is very simple, it was made with efficiency in mind. Basically if you have a quick idea and want to paint your actors, drag them around quickly and show it to someone this is what you can use. Also I think it's a bit more fun to actually "lead" your actors around, then roll back in time, add another actor, follow the original one around etc. It's more like live editing(you record animations while other animations are playing around), less planning like in Flash where you plan out your keyframes, assign Tweens, play with animation curves... You can also save actors as "props", which means they can be more easily used as background tiles (as props they are snapping to grids and bunch of other things). There's also camera zoom/slide etc., I won't bore you with details.

The tool is free right now. What I hope is get cool videos to 8bitclips YouTube channel and share revenue from the views (that's the longterm plan for funding). So basically your pixel art could get to much more people through this. There might be contests about "the best retro video" coming soon (with cash rewards), so maybe another reason to try this out :)

Feedback is very welcome, once some of you login. Right now you can sign up but I'll need to activate your account manually. I want to do closed testing with bunch of active people before opening this to totally everyone.

2 screenshots and 1 Youtube video of the resulting animation here: http://8bitclips.com/sample.html

The audio was added externally, not supported yet.

Sign up here http://8bitclips.com/

Thanks!

Thanks! :) Yeah it's a bit like that, except the animations are not defined in a game script but by dragging the characters around and recording it live.

Edited by falcan - 05 April 2013 at 4:33am