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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 (Abre numa nova janela) (arms and legs) and torso (Abre numa nova janela) are represented using straight lines. The head (Abre numa nova janela) is most often represented by a circle (Abre numa nova janela), which can be filled or unfilled. Details such as hands (Abre numa nova janela), feet (Abre numa nova janela), and a neck (Abre numa nova janela) may be present or absent, and the head is sometimes embellished with details such as facial features (Abre numa nova janela) or hair (Abre numa nova janela). Simpler stick figures often display disproportionate physical features and ambiguous emotion.[1] (Abre numa nova janela)

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 (Abre numa nova janela), and their simplicity and versatility have led to their use in infographics (Abre numa nova janela), signage (Abre numa nova janela), animations (Abre numa nova janela), storyboards (Abre numa nova janela), and many other kinds of visual media.

Following the advent of the World Wide Web (Abre numa nova janela), the stick figure saw prominent use in Flash animation (Abre numa nova janela).

History

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

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

In 1925, Austrian sociologist Otto Neurath (Abre numa nova janela) began work on what would become the International System of Typographic Picture Education (ISOTYPE (Abre numa nova janela)),  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 (Abre numa nova janela) founded Pictorial Statistics Inc., and brought ISOTYPE to the United States (Abre numa nova janela) in 1972.

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

In 1974, the U.S. Department of Transportation (Abre numa nova janela) commissioned the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) (Abre numa nova janela) to develop the DOT pictograms (Abre numa nova janela),  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 (Abre numa nova janela) Symbols released featured Stick figures.

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

Internet culture

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Tom Fulp (Abre numa nova janela) began to produce 2D stick figure animations on his Amiga (Abre numa nova janela) computer for entertainment purposes in the early 1990s.[citation needed (Abre numa nova janela)] Fulp began to work with Flash (Abre numa nova janela), a piece of software used to produce interactive games and animations, soon after its acquisition by Macromedia (Abre numa nova janela). In 1995, he created the website Newgrounds (Abre numa nova janela), which he used to host games he had created, such as Pico's School (Abre numa nova janela) (1999).[7] (Abre numa nova janela) 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] (Abre numa nova janela)

"Xiao Xiao"

Main article: Xiao Xiao (Abre numa nova janela)

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

Other notable events (2001–2005) January 19, 2001: Animator Rob_D creates the popular series Cyanide & Happiness (Abre numa nova janela),  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] (Abre numa nova janela)[non-primary source needed (Abre numa nova janela)] September 2005: The webcomic xkcd (Abre numa nova janela),  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] (Abre numa nova janela)[13] (Abre numa nova janela) Animator vs. Animation

Main article: Animator vs. Animation (Abre numa nova janela)

Created by animator, YouTuber, and artist Alan Becker (Abre numa nova janela), the first episode of Animator vs. Animation (Abre numa nova janela) premiered on Newgrounds on June 3, 2006,[14] (Abre numa nova janela) using flash animation (Abre numa nova janela).  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] (Abre numa nova janela) As of December 2024, the series contains eleven main episodes and a  number of spin-offs, among them include the video "Animation vs. Minecraft (Abre numa nova janela)", which has gained over 305 million views as of March 2022.[citation needed (Abre numa nova janela)] 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 (Abre numa nova janela). In total, all of Alan Becker's animation videos have been watched over four and a half billion times,[citation needed (Abre numa nova janela)] with the vast majority of them being centered around stick figure animation.

Pivot Animator

Main article: Pivot Animator (Abre numa nova janela)

Pivot Animator (Abre numa nova janela) (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 (Abre numa nova janela)'s success.[citation needed (Abre numa nova janela)]

This is Bob

At some point between June 2008 and April 2009, an Internet copypasta (Abre numa nova janela) 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] (Abre numa nova janela)[better source needed (Abre numa nova janela)] In response, the YouTube community brought back the Bob copypasta in a new form, with Bob "building an army" against Google+.[17] (Abre numa nova janela)

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

In July 2017, Adobe Systems, which had continued to support and develop both Flash Animator (Abre numa nova janela) 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] (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela).[20] (Abre numa nova janela) A number of safety issues and more versatile alternatives like HTML5 (Abre numa nova janela) had rendered Flash obsolete.[21] (Abre numa nova janela)

Unicode

You may need rendering support (Abre numa nova janela) to display the uncommon Unicode (Abre numa nova janela) characters in this table correctly.

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

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

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

See also

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

References

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

Chivers, Tom (November 6, 2009). "The 10 best webcomics, from Achewood to XKCD" (Abre numa nova janela). The Telegraph (Abre numa nova janela). Archived (Abre numa nova janela) from the original on November 19, 2015. Retrieved March 29, 2022.

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