How a Family Project Sparked a Bigger Vision

This adventure began as a rainy-weekend coding exercise with my daughter and nephews. Our goal was simple: turn a stickman doodle into a playable character. Their creativity quickly outgrew our prototype, pushing me to rethink how portable our characters could be across different games.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if our stickman could travel to any world we build next?” — My nine-year-old co-designer

Remembering MUGEN & the Power of Community Mods

Back in the early 2000s, the M.U.G.E.N engine gave budding game designers like me a playground to create custom fighters. It was open, moddable, and wildly creative. That ethos still resonates, and it’s the spirit I’m channeling into this 2D Animation Lab.

What Makes a Character Truly Portable?

Beyond sprite sheets, a portable character needs a rig—bones, constraints, and animation data that can be re-targeted. My lab focuses on:

• Skeleton-based animation for resolution independence.
• Procedural movesets that adapt to new physics systems.
• An open asset format anyone can extend.

Under the Hood: Tools & Techniques

I’m building with TypeScript , HTML5 Canvas , and a sprinkle of WebGL for performant previews. The engine is framework-free (think micro-ECS), so contributors can drop in without wrestling heavyweight dependencies.

Join the Lab

If you’re passionate about open-source fighting games, procedural worlds, or just tinkering with animation rigs, check out the GitHub repo and share your ideas. The goal is to make the next-gen MUGEN together.