stick figure

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A stick figure

A stick figure is a very simple type of drawing made of lines and dots, often of the human form or other animals. In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes, mouth or crudely scratched-out hair. The arms, legs and torso are all represented by straight lines. There has been much debate about whether stick figures should have necks and this varies from artist to artist. However the general consensus is that stick figures do not require necks.^[1][2]

Stick figures are typically drawn by hand with a pen, pencil, marker or whatever is at hand. Graffiti of stick figures are found throughout history, often scratched with a sharp object on hard surfaces such as stone or concrete walls.

They are iconic and sketched with minimal detail. However, if one wanted to show emotion, simple additions can provide facial expressions, such as inward-pointing "eyebrows" showing anger, or widened "eyes" for fear, but many stick figures lack noses, mouths, or have no facial features displaying absent or ambiguous emotional expression.

Stick figures have proven effective as a source of advertising, entertainment and as a form of storyboarding and practice for film work. This is especially crucial for creating animatics, as a film special effects team is then able to visually display the outcome of a scene by using stick figures, but saving the money, time and effort that a completed shot would require.

History

The AIGA symbol for drinking fountain

The stick figure's earliest roots are in prehistoric art. Tens of thousands of years later, writing systems that use images for words or morphemes — e.g. logographies such as Egyptian and Chinese — started simplifying people and other objects to be used as linguistic symbols. There is also a modern history that traces at least in part from Rudolf Modley's extending the use of figures from Isotype for commercial use. The first international use of stick figures is in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Pictograms created by Japanese designers Masaru Katzumie and Yoshiro Yamashita formed the basis of future pictograms. In 1972, Otl Aicher developed the stick figures used on the signage, printed materials, etc. for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Drawing on those and many other similar symbol sets in use at the time, in 1974 and 1979 AIGA (commissioned by the U.S. Department of Transportation) developed the DOT pictograms — 50 public domain symbols for use at transportation hubs, large events, and other contexts in which people would know a wide variety of different languages. These, or symbols derived from them, are used widely through much of the world today.

Animation

Stick figure animated using Adobe Flash

Flash

Stick figures are often used in animations made with Adobe Flash. Stick figures are easy to draw and can be traditionally animated a lot quicker than full drawings. Well known stick figure animations include Xiao Xiao, Joe Zombie, Castle, Metallic Knights, and Killing Spree. All of the aforementioned series can be watched at the flash portal site Newgrounds.

Cutout Pro Stickman

Cutout Pro Stickman^[3] is specifically designed for stick figure animation. Each figure is controlled with control points and key frames and saves drawing inbetweens. When an arm is moved, the whole body gets affected using skeleton simulation. Stickman has some functions for importing pictures, add control points and deform them. Users can export animations as .avi or .swf files. It is also possible to generate sprite sheets for use in 2D games and detailed cartoons. Figures can be created with a software called "Elemento" that follows with Stickman.

Pivot Stickfigure Animator

Pivot animated stick figure

Pivot Stickfigure Animator is a freeware application designed for stick figure animation. As with Cutout Pro Stickman, this software allows a user to control key points/joints. The beta version allows the user to load images (sprites) and animate them.

This Is Stick Figure Animation Theatre (TISFAT)

TISFAT is tween-based stick figure animation software (though Frame by Frame animation is still possible), allowing the user to create any kinds of figures and objects, as well as add bitmaps, that are animated in layers by keyframes, between which the program does the animation for the user. Movies can be exported as AVI, SWF and SIF files. However, the animator does have to thicken the stickman's joints and limbs in order for it to look better. The animation style is a sort of ragdoll type. You can lock their joints in place and move the other limbs but this can get difficult. It is harder to animate in TISFAT than in Pivot. but it can look a lot better.

Stykz

A freeware stick figure animation application with features similar to Pivot. Stykz contains many features that add to Pivot, such as in-window stick-figure editing, individual segment colorization, ability to set the layering order of segments within a stick figure, etc. There are additional features planned, including sound and sprite support, and Flash-like motion tweening. It also supports importing .stk files from Pivot version 2.0x.

Stykz is currently in release candidate stage for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows and is in development for Linux systems. The third release candidate (RC3) for the Mac OS X and Windows was released July 19, 2009. The Linux version's first public beta is scheduled to be released before the end of the year.

Comics

• The Order of the Stick
• xkcd

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Stick figures

• Gerd Arntz and the Woodcut Origins of the Stick Figure
• The 50 AIGA symbols