Animated Stick Figures

The motions

Twenty built-in motion clips, each loops smoothly.

Movement & expression

• Idle — a subtle breathing stand.
• Walk / Run — foot-planted cycles (no skating); Run leans in and pumps its arms.
• Wave — one arm raised, hand waving.
• Talk — hands gesturing near the chest.
• Point — an arm extended in the facing direction.
• Clap — hands meeting in front.
• Jump — crouch, launch, tuck, land.
• Dance — hip sway with alternating arms.
• Cheer — both arms up, pumping.

Daily actions

• Sit — seated and breathing, hands on the thighs. Add a chair or bench behind it from the Props category.
• Type — seated at a desk, hands tapping. Pair it with the laptop prop.
• Squat — a full squat cycle, hips back, feet planted.
• Lift weights — a bicep curl, both arms together.
• Stretch — reach overhead and ease back down.
• Kick — one leg swings forward and back.
• Cook — leaning over the hob, one hand stirring in circles.
• Sweep — both hands on a broom, pushing forward and back.
• Drink — raise a cup to the mouth, tip, lower.
• Think — hand at the chin, slow head tilt.

Tutorial: create an animation, step by step

1. Open the Stick Figures panel. Click the walking-person button in the toolbar, or Menu → Stick Figures.

2. Switch to the Animated tab. In the chip row, click 🎞 Animated. You'll see all ten motions as preview cells.

3. Add a motion. Click Walk (or any motion). A figure appears on the page and immediately starts moving — it loops on the canvas.

4. Place & size it. Drag the figure to position it; drag a corner handle to scale it up or down. The motion keeps playing at any size.

5. Use the figure controls. With the figure selected, the panel shows an Animated figure section:

   • Clip chips — switch the motion (Walk → Wave → Talk…) instantly.
   • Pause / Play — freeze or resume just this figure.
   • Flip — face it left or right (so a walker can head either way).
   • Bake — see step 8.

6. Recolour it. Change the stroke colour in the Properties panel to recolour the whole figure. Switch render style to Sketch for a hand-drawn look — it still animates.

7. Build a little scene. Add a second figure and Flip it so the two face each other; give one Talk and the other Idle. Mix in static figures, props (a laptop, a speech bubble) and any other canvas elements — it's one shared canvas.

8. Bake a pose when you need a still. Click Bake to freeze the current frame into an ordinary editable figure (grouped bezier paths). Ungroup it to tweak a limb, or drop it into a diagram. The original animation is replaced by the baked frame.
   To reshape a part: ungroup the figure and select a single part — its path node handles (small squares) appear and become draggable. Or use the Reshape tool to bend whichever part you grab without ungrouping. (Node handles only show for a single selected path, so nothing draggable appears while the whole group is selected.)

Make a figure walk a route (path-follow)

The most powerful storytelling move: have a figure walk along a path you draw. It travels the route at a steady pace with its feet planted (no sliding) and automatically faces the direction of travel.

1. Draw a path — use the Line, Pen/Curve, or Pencil tool to draw the route the figure should follow (a straight line, an arc, a wavy stroll — anything).
2. Add an animated figure (Animated tab → any motion) near the path.
3. Select both — click the figure, then shift-click the path (so the figure and the path are selected together).
4. Click “Walk this path” in the Animated figure controls. The figure snaps onto the path and walks it end to end, looping, facing the way it's going.
5. Adjust — reshape the path and the figure re-routes; use Stop following path to release it.
6. Set the pace — Lap time is how many seconds one trip along the route takes at 1×, and the Speed slider scales it. Reshaping the path keeps the same lap time, so a longer route simply means a faster walk.

Chain actions over time (sequences)

Give a figure a little script: with it selected, use the Action sequence editor in the panel to add timed steps — each a motion played for a number of seconds. The figure runs the steps in order and loops.

1. + Add step to append a motion; pick the clip from the dropdown and set its duration in seconds.
2. Add more — e.g. Walk 3s → Wave 2s → Talk 2s — for a figure that walks up, waves, then chats, forever.
3. Remove a step with ×, or Clear to go back to a single clip.

Automate it (API)

const Y = window.Yappy;
Y.listStickFigureClips();                       // [{id:'walk',name:'Walk'}, …]
const a = Y.insertAnimatedFigure('walk', { x: 200, y: 200, width: 160, facing: 1, speed: 1 });
const b = Y.insertAnimatedFigure('talk', { x: 520, y: 200, facing: -1 });
Y.setAnimatedFigureClip('wave', [a]);           // switch clip
Y.flipAnimatedFigure([b]);                       // face the other way
Y.setAnimatedFigurePlaying(false, [a]);          // pause just this one
Y.bakeAnimatedFigure(a);                          // freeze current frame → editable paths

// Speed
Y.setAnimatedFigureSpeed(2, [a]);                 // 2x — clips, sequences AND path-following
Y.setFigurePathDuration(8, a);                    // 8s for one lap of the route, at 1x

// Faces & hair (same call as for dropped library figures)
Y.setStickFace({ face: 'excited', hair: 'spiky' }, [a]);
Y.insertAnimatedFigure('walk', { face: 'happy', hair: 'long', headFill: true });

Give it a face

An animated figure wears an expression and hair just like a library figure. Select it and use the Face & hair section (bottom of the Stick Figures panel, and in Properties) to pick from 12 expressions and 10 hair styles.

Nothing has to be regenerated — the face is drawn from the head's live position every frame, so it keeps up with the motion, follows the figure when you Flip it, and comes along when you Bake the frame to editable paths.

Direct the whole scene (Scene Timeline)

Click Scene timeline in the panel to open a timeline across the bottom of the screen. Every animated figure becomes a track, with its action sequence shown as coloured blocks along a time ruler.

• Play / Pause / Restart and a Loop toggle drive all figures together from one clock.
• Scrub — drag the red playhead (or click the ruler) to jump to any moment; every figure poses at that instant. Great for lining up a scene or grabbing a frame to bake.
• Click a track's label to select that figure on the canvas.
• Reorder a step — drag a block left/right to change the order of actions.
• Resize a step — drag the right edge of a block to change how long that motion runs (snaps to ½ second).
• Sync to slides — on a slides/pages document, toggle the monitor-play button (“Restart the scene when the slide/page changes”) so each slide plays its animation fresh.

Export your animation as a video

On a page document (a design/post or slides), Export → MP4 Video renders the page itself — exact page bounds at the page's own resolution, animations playing, no workspace around it — for the duration you choose, then downloads an H.264 .mp4 (or .webm). Your zoom/pan doesn't matter; the export is framed to the page. API: exportVideo(seconds?, 'mp4' | 'webm').

Prefer a GIF (auto-plays anywhere, loops forever)? Export → Animated GIF does the same page-framed render as a looping .gif (12 fps, long side capped at 960px — GIFs get huge beyond that). API: exportGif(seconds?, fps?).

Alternatively, record the live canvas: with an animated figure selected, click Record video in the panel — it captures whatever is on screen (all figures, sequences and path-follow, exactly as they play) and Stop & save recording downloads the file. (A red recording indicator shows while it runs.)

Prefer a shareable webpage? Export → HTML writes a self-contained .html file that plays the animation when opened in any browser — the figures walk, wave and follow their paths just like on the canvas. (API: exportHtml(name?).) The player is interactive: presentations advance with → / Space (back with ←, Home/End jump to first/last slide) or the on-screen arrows, and an infinite-canvas export opens auto-framed to your content.

Good to know

• An animated figure is a single object — move, scale, rotate and recolour it like any shape.
• It renders procedurally from a skeleton; to hand-edit the artwork, Bake it to paths first.
• Share a moving animation as a video (record) or a self-contained HTML page (Export → HTML) that plays it; bake a frame for a still. Image/PDF export captures a single frame.