Celebrating the Future of the Wick Editor

Today, we’re excited to share some amazing news. The Wick Editor has received a Mozilla Open Source Support grant, which will allow us to focus on developing the Wick Editor full-time for the coming months.

What is the Wick Editor?

The Wick Editor is a free and open source tool for creating games, animations, and everything in-between. It lives entirely in the browser at www.wickeditor.com, making it available on any computer with an internet connection. The tool is inspired heavily by software like Macromedia Flash and HyperCard

We’ve been making the Wick Editor for over 2 ½ years now. What started as a weird, tiny drawing tool on the internet has turned into a mission to create the most accessible tool for creating multimedia projects on the web.

Over 120,000 people have used the Wick Editor since its release. During that time the community has created incredible animations, games, and interactive doohickeys with the Wick Editor. Together we’ve discussed updates, new features, and problems with the editor, making it easier for us to improve the tool. Overall, the community has fostered an inviting, supportive, and cooperative environment. With the help of everyone who’s touched the Wick Editor, from every skill level and background, we’ve been able to create a project that will hopefully inspire the next generation of digital artists, game designers, educators, and creators.

What does Mozilla Open Source Support do for the Wick Editor?

Up until recently, Zach and I have been working on Wick Editor part-time. As full-time students, with jobs to support ourselves, we haven’t had the opportunity to dedicate ourselves to developing the Wick Editor.

With this new grant, combined with our recent graduation from university, we’ll be able to work on the Wick Editor full time for several months. This means we’ll be able to push new updates faster, interact with the community more, and put out better content than ever before including new tutorials and examples. It also means we’ll be able to work with more talented artists, designers, and developers, to create better interfaces, examples, and artwork for Wick Editor than we’ve been able to put out so far.

So what have you been doing for the last few months?

We haven’t pushed a major update to the Wick Editor in quite some time, and this is for a good reason. We’ve been working on a better, faster version of the Wick Editor, redesigning the entire engine from the ground up. We’ve optimized the drawing tools, created a new system for exporting projects, and hundreds of other changes that will make the Wick Editor easier to use and develop! We’ve also spent a lot of time running beginner workshops with the Wick Editor to make sure we’re actually getting things right.

As for that better, faster version… we’ll be releasing a test build on October 24th for the community to try out before the full release of Wick Editor 1.0!

But will the Wick Editor still be Free?

The Wick Editor will always be free and open-source, meaning that this new and improved version will be too. We are committed to truly creating the most accessible tool for making digital media on the web, and being both free from cost and open-source is key to achieving that goal. So yes, Wick Editor will definitely still be free!

What’s next?

Alongside the release of the new editor, examples, tutorials, and community updates, we’ll be looking for ways to make development of the Wick Editor sustainable. We’re incredibly excited by the opportunity our community has been given by the MOSS grant, and hope that we can harness that excitement by working with the community to create a way that we can sustainably support our development.

First, we’ve launched a Patreon page that allows anyone to directly support the development of the Wick Editor.

Secondly, we’ll be looking for future grant opportunities and partnerships that will allow us to make huge pushes like this in the future.

Lastly, we’ll be launching some Wick Editor merchandise soon (like stickers and t-shirts) that will allow our fans to support the development of the tool while getting themselves something in return!

Along the way, we’ll be experimenting with some other ideas that will support continued development of the tool while keeping the Wick Editor free and open source forever.

Thank You

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our fans, community, Mozilla, and all of our other funders for making these last few years so special and for giving us an opportunity to do what we love by making the internet a more connected, accessible, and creative place, with the Wick Editor. Being able to interact with such a dedicated community of users, see the awesome work they create, and watch new artists emerge has been amazing, and we can’t wait to see what this community does next.