Click. Drag. Snap

I wanted posing 2D characters to feel as natural as moving your hand — fast, direct, alive. Just click, drag, and watch your character respond instantly.

(If you missed the first post: this is my in-progress 2D posing and animation tool — built to let artists pose characters in seconds, swap art, flip between saved poses, and export PNG spritesheets.)

🎯 1. Direct Manipulation

The first version let me move limbs freely — this one makes it intuitive. Now, every limb can be moved using the mouse. The editor just responds to where you click and drag. Behind the scenes, it’s solving various local-to-world transforms every frame. In practice, you just grab a limb and it behaves the way you expect.

🔄 2. Rotation That Feels Physical

I wanted rotation to feel tactile — something you could feel through the mouse. Now each limb has a visible rotation ring and pivot point. Click and drag around the ring, and the part spins naturally around its anchor. The pivot dot stays locked in world space, giving the motion real weight. It’s a small UX detail, but it changes everything — rotation feels alive.

📏 3. Scaling That Respects the Rig

Scaling was another challenge — it’s easy to make it work visually, but hard to make it feel stable. The tool now scales limbs from any corner the mouse clicks, propagating the scale to the children too (hands scale with arms). Hold Shift for uniform scaling, or stretch asymmetrically to exaggerate poses.

🧲 4. Snapping — The Hardest “Simple” Feature

Snapping sounds simple — until you try it on a full skeletal hierarchy. Each limb inherits transforms from its parents, so every drag has to be mapped back through the chain to snap correctly in world space. Now it just works — you can move or scale limbs that snap perfectly to a configurable grid spacing, so that users can be more precise.

🚀 5. What’s Next

With dragging, rotation, scaling, and snapping working together, the tool's main editing loop is nearly complete.
Next up:

• Visual feedback for snapping and selection.

• Undo/redo for all edit actions.

• Export posed characters directly as PNG spritesheets for any engine.

I’m also exploring more rig presets (biped, quadruped, stylized) and custom material support.

❤️ 6. Closing Thoughts

This tool started because I was tired of slow workflows when posing my own characters.
Now, it’s starting to feel like something bigger — a little ecosystem where art, math, and motion meet.

If you’re a tool builder, artist, or dev who loves bringing 2D characters to life, follow along:
👉 2D Pose Editing Tool

Feedback and feature requests are always welcome.