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A stick figure (also known as a stick man, stick woman, or stick person) is a very simple drawing of a human or other animal, in which the limbs (Opens in a new window) (arms and legs) and torso (Opens in a new window) are represented using straight lines. The head (Opens in a new window) is most often represented by a circle (Opens in a new window), which can be filled or unfilled. Details such as hands (Opens in a new window), feet (Opens in a new window), and a neck (Opens in a new window) may be present or absent, and the head is sometimes embellished with details such as facial features (Opens in a new window) or hair (Opens in a new window). Simpler stick figures often display disproportionate physical features and ambiguous emotion.[1] (Opens in a new window)

The stick figure is a universally recognizable symbol—likely one  of the most well-known in the world. Drawings of stick figures transcend  language, location and demographic, and the stick figure's roots can be  traced back to over 30,000 years ago. Stick figures are often drawn by children (Opens in a new window), and their simplicity and versatility have led to their use in infographics (Opens in a new window), signage (Opens in a new window), animations (Opens in a new window), storyboards (Opens in a new window), and many other kinds of visual media.

Following the advent of the World Wide Web (Opens in a new window), the stick figure saw prominent use in Flash animation (Opens in a new window).

History

The stick figure long predates modern civilisation. Stick figures were a feature of prehistoric art (Opens in a new window), and can be found in cave paintings (Opens in a new window) and petroglyphs (Opens in a new window).  Stick figure depictions of people, animals, and daily life have been  discovered in numerous sites all over the world, such as depictions of Mimi (Opens in a new window) in Australia (Opens in a new window) or the Indalo (Opens in a new window) in Spain.

As language began to develop, logographies (Opens in a new window) (writing systems that use images to represent words or morphemes (Opens in a new window)) came to use stick figures as glyphs.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] In Mandaean (Opens in a new window) manuscripts (Opens in a new window), uthras (Opens in a new window) (celestial beings) were illustrated using stick figures.[2] (Opens in a new window)

In 1925, Austrian sociologist Otto Neurath (Opens in a new window) began work on what would become the International System of Typographic Picture Education (ISOTYPE (Opens in a new window)),  a system of conveying warnings, statistics, and general information  through standardized and easily understandable pictographs. Neurath made  significant use of stick figure designs to represent individuals and  statistics. In 1934, graphic designer Rudolf Modley (Opens in a new window) founded Pictorial Statistics Inc., and brought ISOTYPE to the United States (Opens in a new window) in 1972.

The first international use of stick figures[dubious (Opens in a new window) – discuss (Opens in a new window)] dates back to the 1964 Summer Olympics (Opens in a new window) in Tokyo (Opens in a new window). Pictograms created by Japanese designers Masaru Katsumi and Yoshiro Yamashita formed the basis of future pictograms.[vague (Opens in a new window)][3] (Opens in a new window)[4] (Opens in a new window) In 1972, Otto "Otl" Aicher (Opens in a new window) designed round-ended, geometric, grid-based stick figures to be used in the signage (Opens in a new window), printed materials, and television broadcasts for the 1972 Summer Olympics (Opens in a new window) in Munich (Opens in a new window).[5] (Opens in a new window)[6] (Opens in a new window)

In 1974, the U.S. Department of Transportation (Opens in a new window) commissioned the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) (Opens in a new window) to develop the DOT pictograms (Opens in a new window),  34 (later 50) symbols for use at transportation hubs, public spaces,  large events, and other contexts in which there may be great linguistic  variation among those required to understand the signage. These  pictograms featured stick figures heavily, drawing on previous designs,  such as those made for the 1972 Summer Olympics. These symbols, or  symbols derived from them, are widely used throughout the world today.

In 2003, SymbolStix (Opens in a new window) Symbols released featured Stick figures.

A stick figure at the Leo Petroglyph (Opens in a new window) in the United States The AIGA (Opens in a new window) symbol for the drinking fountain A stick figure sign for cycling (Opens in a new window), by Otl Aicher (Opens in a new window), at the 1972 Munich Olympics (Opens in a new window) A video displaying the drawing of a stick man, a stick woman, and a stick dog, respectively Flag of Mali Federation (Opens in a new window) (1959–1961) Stick figure in the Internet community[vague (Opens in a new window)] Restroom sign with stick figures

Internet culture

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Tom Fulp (Opens in a new window) began to produce 2D stick figure animations on his Amiga (Opens in a new window) computer for entertainment purposes in the early 1990s.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] Fulp began to work with Flash (Opens in a new window), a piece of software used to produce interactive games and animations, soon after its acquisition by Macromedia (Opens in a new window). In 1995, he created the website Newgrounds (Opens in a new window), which he used to host games he had created, such as Pico's School (Opens in a new window) (1999).[7] (Opens in a new window) Prompted by the website's popularity, Fulp introduced a portal through  which users could submit Flash animations and games of their own in  2000.[8] (Opens in a new window)

"Xiao Xiao"

Main article: Xiao Xiao (Opens in a new window)

On April 19, 2001, Chinese animator Zhu Zhiqiang (Opens in a new window) uploaded a 75-second-long video titled "Xiao Xiao (Opens in a new window)" on the newly formed Newgrounds (Opens in a new window) animation portal, inspired by Hong Kong martial arts films (Opens in a new window).[9] (Opens in a new window) The series included stick figures fighting each other, and took on a variety of formats, including animation and video games.[10] (Opens in a new window)

Other notable events (2001–2005) January 19, 2001: Animator Rob_D creates the popular series Cyanide & Happiness (Opens in a new window),  the first episode of Joe Zombie's debut with more cinematic, although  still very rudimentary, stickman animation. The original series lasted  three episodes before being rebooted with better graphics in October.[11] (Opens in a new window)[non-primary source needed (Opens in a new window)] September 2005: The webcomic xkcd (Opens in a new window),  which uses stick figures in humorous contexts often relating to  science, philosophy, technology, coding and Internet culture, debuts. It  is written and drawn by Randall Munroe.[12] (Opens in a new window)[13] (Opens in a new window) Animator vs. Animation

Main article: Animator vs. Animation (Opens in a new window)

Created by animator, YouTuber, and artist Alan Becker (Opens in a new window), the first episode of Animator vs. Animation (Opens in a new window) premiered on Newgrounds on June 3, 2006,[14] (Opens in a new window) using flash animation (Opens in a new window).  It showed a stick figure fighting to break out of the animation program  it was created in. The video has garnered almost 80 million views since  its publication.[15] (Opens in a new window) As of December 2024, the series contains eleven main episodes and a  number of spin-offs, among them include the video "Animation vs. Minecraft (Opens in a new window)", which has gained over 305 million views as of March 2022.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] The Season 3 in the series of episodes features multiple styles of  stick figures, including a cave painting character, a stickman similar  to the one in Stickman vs. Wall, a figure seemingly from Pivot Animator,  and a figure based on those in DOT pictograms (Opens in a new window). In total, all of Alan Becker's animation videos have been watched over four and a half billion times,[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] with the vast majority of them being centered around stick figure animation.

Pivot Animator

Main article: Pivot Animator (Opens in a new window)

Pivot Animator (Opens in a new window) (formerly Pivot Stickfigure Animator) was created in 2005 by software  developer Peter Bone. The program was specifically geared towards stick  figure animation. Unlike Adobe Flash, which had grown into a highly  complex 2D animation environment, Pivot Animator, with its simplicity  allowed virtually anyone to create stick figure animations without  requiring any form of expertise. This brought the ability to create and  distribute quality stick animations to a much greater audience than  before, and alongside Flash, Pivot Animator soon became another central  tool for the countless Internet users who were caught up in the trend  after Animator vs. Animation (Opens in a new window)'s success.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)]

This is Bob

At some point between June 2008 and April 2009, an Internet copypasta (Opens in a new window) began to appear featuring a Unicode stick figure named Bob. There was  an initial surge in popularity in April 2009, leading to a hostile  response from the YouTube community wherein the community would flag the  copypasta as spam. This spread of the copypasta would reach its peak in  search interest around June 2010 before declining gradually. However,  on September 24, 2013, YouTube announced that they would be integrating  the YouTube Comments section with Google+.[16] (Opens in a new window)[better source needed (Opens in a new window)] In response, the YouTube community brought back the Bob copypasta in a new form, with Bob "building an army" against Google+.[17] (Opens in a new window)

Other notable events December 24, 2008: Flipnote (Opens in a new window), another competitor to Adobe Flash and Pivot, is released. While not as popular as the aforementioned two,[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] Flipnote does serve a role in the productions of stick figure media until the software's termination in 2018.[citation needed (Opens in a new window)] November 18, 2010: The first episode of Dick Figures (Opens in a new window), an adult animated web series created by Ed Skudder (Opens in a new window) and Zack Keller (Opens in a new window), is published on YouTube by Mondo Media (Opens in a new window). The series finished with over 50 episodes and 250 million views.[18] (Opens in a new window) 2017–2021: The end of Flash

In July 2017, Adobe Systems, which had continued to support and develop both Flash Animator (Opens in a new window) and Flash Player for the past 12 years, announced that they would  officially end support for the program by the end of the decade.[19] (Opens in a new window) This decision had far-reaching consequences as it entailed not only the  end of development on the software but also the official end of sites  that still supported Flash and the deactivation of virtually every  instance of Flash player via a built-in kill switch (Opens in a new window).[20] (Opens in a new window) A number of safety issues and more versatile alternatives like HTML5 (Opens in a new window) had rendered Flash obsolete.[21] (Opens in a new window)

Unicode

You may need rendering support (Opens in a new window) to display the uncommon Unicode (Opens in a new window) characters in this table correctly.

As of Unicode (Opens in a new window) version 13.0, there are five stick figure characters in the Symbols for Legacy Computing (Opens in a new window) block. These are in the codepoints U+1FBC5 to U+1FBC9.[22] (Opens in a new window)

OpenMoji (Opens in a new window) supports the five characters along with joining character sequences (Opens in a new window) to give the other figures a dress.[23] (Opens in a new window) For example, the sequence U+1FBC6 🯆 STICK FIGURE WITH ARMS RAISED, U+200D  ZERO WIDTH JOINER (Opens in a new window), U+1F457 👗 DRESS (🯆‍👗).

Unicode stick figure characters   Codepoint Name (Opens in a new window) Character Notes   U+1FB (Opens in a new window)C5 STICK FIGURE 🯅  Not to be mistaken with U+1F6B9 🚹 MENS SYMBOL[22] (Opens in a new window)   U+1FB (Opens in a new window)C6 STICK FIGURE WITH ARMS RAISED 🯆    U+1FB (Opens in a new window)C7 STICK FIGURE LEANING LEFT 🯇 Mirror images of each other.   U+1FB (Opens in a new window)C8 STICK FIGURE LEANING RIGHT 🯈   U+1FB (Opens in a new window)C9 STICK FIGURE WITH DRESS 🯉  Not to be mistaken with U+1F6BA 🚺 WOMENS SYMBOL[22] (Opens in a new window)

See also

1903 – In Arthur Conan Doyle (Opens in a new window)'s story The Adventure of the Dancing Men (Opens in a new window), Sherlock Holmes (Opens in a new window) deciphers messages encoded as sequences of stick figures. 1908 – Emile Cohl (Opens in a new window)'s pioneer animated film Fantasmagorie (Opens in a new window) features a stick figure as its main character. Tidyman (Keep Britain Tidy) (Opens in a new window) Tadpole person (Opens in a new window) Ampelmännchen (Opens in a new window)

References

"Definition of stick figure | Dictionary.com" (Opens in a new window). www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2021-11-27. Nasoraia, Brikha H.S. (Opens in a new window) (2021). The Mandaean gnostic religion: worship practice and deep thought. New Delhi: Sterling. ISBN (Opens in a new window) 978-81-950824-1-4 (Opens in a new window). OCLC (Opens in a new window) 1272858968 (Opens in a new window). "Yoshiro Yamashita" (Opens in a new window). luc.devroye.org. Retrieved 2021-11-23. "Visual Design". Official Report of the 1972 Olympic Games, volume 1 (Opens in a new window). Munich: Pro Sport. 1974. p. 272. OCLC (Opens in a new window) 1076250303 (Opens in a new window). Retrieved June 21, 2020. "Otl Aicher pictograms and the 1972 Olympic Games" (Opens in a new window). Otl Aicher pictograms. Retrieved June 21, 2020. "Otl Aicher" (Opens in a new window). Architectuul. Retrieved June 21, 2020. Salter, Anastasia (2014). Flash : building the interactive web (Opens in a new window). John Murray. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN (Opens in a new window) 978-0-262-32577-6 (Opens in a new window). OCLC (Opens in a new window) 890375115 (Opens in a new window). "Newgrounds Wiki - History" (Opens in a new window). 2021-03-31. Archived from the original (Opens in a new window) on 2021-03-31. Retrieved 2021-11-23. "Xiao Xiao" (Opens in a new window). Newgrounds.com. Retrieved 2021-11-23. "Games time forgot: Xiao Xiao" (Opens in a new window). Destructoid. 2009-02-25. Retrieved 2024-03-29. "Joe Zombie :: Episode 1" (Opens in a new window). Newgrounds.com. Retrieved 2024-01-06.

Chivers, Tom (November 6, 2009). "The 10 best webcomics, from Achewood to XKCD" (Opens in a new window). The Telegraph (Opens in a new window). Archived (Opens in a new window) from the original on November 19, 2015. Retrieved March 29, 2022.

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