Building a 2D Character Pose Editor

I’ve always wanted a fast, flexible way to pose 2D characters for my games — something that lets me drag a few limbs, lock constraints, swap art, and instantly see it move.

Most tools either slowed me down or buried me under UI/ learning curve just for a simple animation
So I built my own.

This post walks through how I got there — the ideas, a few of the design battles, and the results in action.

🎥 1. Editing a Character, Freely

The goal was to make posing feel like sketching.
Grab a limb, rotate, reposition, flip front-to-back, drop it in place — all live in-scene.

🎨 2. Replace Art in Real Time

Replacing art used to mean re-importing assets and rebuilding materials. Now it’s a one-click action. Swap out any limb’s texture — the new art can be adjusted straight into place without breaking constraints or the rig.

🧍 3. Making and Flipping Poses

I didn’t want a static editor — I wanted something that could create motion.
So I added a Pose Flipper: make a few poses, save them, and flip through them to preview an animation cycle.
It’s quick, intuitive, and makes iteration fun.

⚙️ 4. Constraints On / Off

Sometimes you want realism. Sometimes you just want chaos.
You can toggle constraints instantly — go from a physically-anchored body to free-form puppet mode. It’s a small thing, but it makes editing feel alive.

💡 The Tech (Without the Lecture)

Under the hood, this thing runs a real-time ECS pipeline that tracks geometry components, updates world transforms, and pushes live GPU data every frame.
There’s a whole snapshot system that keeps the editor thread-safe, and a swapbus-ready material pipeline in progress — but the magic isn’t the code.
It’s that I can open it, grab a limb, and it just works.

🦾 What Comes Next

I’m now polishing it toward public alpha — with better material handling, more rig presets (biped, quadruped, stylized), and eventually direct export to engine formats and PNG spritesheets of all the created poses.
If you’re an artist, animator, or game dev who wants to try this early, I’ll open up testing soon.

🌐 Follow and Feedback

If this project resonates — if you’ve ever wanted a faster way to bring your 2D characters to life — follow along:

• 🕹️ itch.io page

I’d love to hear what features or workflows would make your own creative process easier. Comments, DMs, or feedback threads are all welcome.

🧩 Closing

This started as a small frustration — I just wanted to pose characters faster.
It turned into a full editor, GPU system, and animation playground.
Sometimes that’s how the best tools begin:
You build what you need, and end up making something worth sharing.