Stepworks: Stepworks Studio

The versatility of comics.

Create split-screen presentations that place images, video, and your webcam side by side
Make visual essays, lyric videos, comics, kinetic poetry, and more with one powerful tool
Perform live, record and distribute, or let your audience drive

The timing of music.

Every document has a base tempo
Trigger visuals, text, and audio with musical timing
A wide variety of musical instruments built in
Create beats with simple rhythm notation

Features

Rich with media

Supports major image, audio, and video formats
Search for images and videos from Unsplash and GIPHY
Add your webcam as a video source
Supports YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch video
Share public links to your stories

Text made playful

Display text rhythmically by character, syllable, word, and more
Great for lyric videos
Supports Google Fonts

Rewards for your support

Become a patron and expand the capacity of your account
Get pre-release access to the next major version of Stepworks Studio
Download fun apps like Movie Theatre that you can customize with your Stepworks content

Split screen made simple

Forget fussy layouts — tell your media to “enter from the right” and Stepworks takes care of the rest
Add your webcam and change its size from step to step to match the impact you want to have

Musical at the core

Every document has a core tempo
Create beats with simple rhythm notation
Trigger individual notes or chord-based phrases
Dozens of instruments built into the app
Include a backing track your users can play along to

For advanced users

Randomize and group content with sequences that can sample and quote each other
Open JSON file format means you can generate Stepworks Studio documents programmatically
Want to use your Stepworks content in Unity? Get in touch

Made with Stepworks Studio

Trina

Knowledge worker Trina’s augmented eyes and fingers are owned by a military contractor — what chance is there for resistance? An original story told in still images and audio.

Play now

Shaolin Shadowboxing Breakdown

RZA has repeatedly sampled classic martial arts film Shaolin vs. Lama; this explainer visualizes how and where.

Watch now

Timeframing

Comics taught us to write with boxes of time — now boxes of time are everywhere. A video essay with sophisticated split-screen effects, including webcam.

Watch now

The Ring-Bearer

A visual poem about the “circles and circles, and circles” of exclusivity in Black life, inspired by Alice Randall’s book Black Bottom Saints.

Watch now

Roadmap

I’m currently in the early phases of designing the third major iteration of Stepworks. Here’s what I’m prioritizing:

Digital comics as a primary use case
Multi-user documents
Automatic saves and versioning
Undo

If these are features you’d like to see, consider becoming a patron to support this work!

Are there other features you’re interested in? Let me know