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A stick figure is a very primitive type of drawing, generally of the human form, although stick figures of other types of animals are possible (for example, a stick figure dog). In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes or crudely-scratched-out hair. The neck, arms, legs and torso are all represented by single straight lines (thus the name). The neck and torso are different segments of one straight line.

Generally, stick figures are drawn by hand with a pen or pencil and have hard, defined edges. Though not displaying very much detail, what is drawn is generally required. For instance, if one was to draw a person, the person's eyebrows would (generally) only be drawn to provide a sort of facial expression, be it of anger or shame.

Stick figures have proven effective as a source of advertising, entertainment and as a form of storyboarding and practice for filmwork. 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 in money, time and effort of providing a completed shot, but only having to have the necessary information provided.

Examples

One famous example of stick figures is found in the Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Dancing Men. This story features cryptograms that are represented as a series of stick figures.

In Unified Modeling Language, stick figures are used to represent actors (people or things that are using a computer system to do various things in different roles) in the Use Case diagrams. One famous stick figure, or an approximation thereof, is Mr. Game & Watch, who features in several Nintendo-produced video games. The MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing also features stick figures, its whole appeal being based upon the simplicity of the drawings, and the teen/adult humor associated with each image.

One use of stick figures is in "stick figure death scenes". Another use of them was in Brian Kendall's Flash animation, The Demented Cartoon Movie, which involves stick figures doing random things and being blown up.

Stick figures are prominent in the Xiao Xiao Flash cartoon series, as well as other Flash cartoons involving stick figures using martial arts such as Stick Figure Death Theater.

Stick figures are also often used in in message boards. They can be typed in a simple way. The top can be made with "\O/" the middle can be made with "l" and the bottom can be made with "/ \". The stick figure can then be altered in many ways to make them do funny, and often innappropriate actions. The person believed to have started doing this is the IMDb user "man_with_bunch_of_sticks" who often creates these complex stick people, and posts them online for the other users to see.

Flash animations

Stick figures are typically a form of vector art, in relevance to ones viewed on the internet, so stick figure movies are often created in Macromedia Flash. Stick figures are somewhat frequently used because they are easy to draw and can depict deep amounts of action. Although they're often drawn in a 2D environment, 3D is sometimes simulated. An animator may generally take 3 weeks to 3 months to create a stick figure animation.

Popularity

Stick figures have become a major factor in online minigaming. For instance, HallPass has a rating system in which they record the number of passes by players, who, if they like a game, click on the pass button. Stick games occupy their top 3 and top five through eight. Stick figures are always increasing in popularity over the internet.

PowerPoint Animation

Microsoft PowerPoint can also be used to make stick figure movies. This works very well if you do not have Flash. By making a slide with a stick man in it, copying and pasting a new slide and changing the new slide you can create a movie, although without key frames and tweening, it is a much more laborious process.

See also

• StickDeath.com - A flash animation cartoon involving stick figures
• The Order of the Stick - Web comic in stick figure style
• Minimalist Stick Figure Theatre - Web comic in stick figure style
• PowerPoint animation
• Stick Figure Death Theatre - Flash entertainment site featuring sticks meeting their doom
• Seedy Squad
• Pivot Stickfigure Animator

External links

• DMOZ list of Stick Figure Death sites
• Stick Page, a variety of stick-figure cartoons and movies
• HallPass, a directory of stick-figure animations that users can vote for
• Stick Death directory of stick death animations

• Drawing