Stick figure

A stick figure is a stylized image of a fictional or real existing being whose limbs are each represented by a single line. Basically, one can distinguish between stick figures in the form of drawings and stick figures in the form of vector graphics.

Stick figure reduce a living being on the essentials. Nevertheless, stick figures can be very good to express feelings and emotions. Although stick figure in two dimensions (2D ), they can - especially in movies or kinematic representations - even three-dimensional ( 3D) are shown.

Static stick figure

Much like cephalopods stick figure is a typical element of children's drawings in the late Kopffüßlerphase - an early stage of drawing learning.

Stick figures are common in pictograms. Among the most famous stick figures in pictograms include the sports pictograms of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. Stick figures are also used in icons to convey information independent of language or as soon as possible (eg in traffic ).

In the Unified Modeling Language stick figures are used to represent actors.

Even in works of art stick figure input found. So they are around since 1960/61, commonly found in paintings by AR Penck. According to Lucius Grisebach they illustrate here " in their attitude and their action an event, relationships, forces. " For Keith Haring's works the stick figures are typical. Another artist who gives his intentions by drawing or spraying on of stick figure expression, Harald Naegeli, the " Sprayer of Zurich ". Matt Mullican has created a series of drawings stick figure " Glen " was created, which questions the perception of art.

Stick figures are also found in the literature, for example in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Dancing Men especially often stick figures are represented in cartoons and comics. Such is the comic series The Hartmut by Hartmut Klotzbücher ( Haggi ). Much older testimonies of stick figures are found in the hieroglyphic script ( an image character font and the oldest written form of ancient Egyptian language ).

Stick figures in motion

Stick figure - in particular due to its simple structure - used for animations like, eg in flipbook.

The film career of stick figures began early and is not finished yet. In 1908 the film " phantasmagoria " of Émile Cohl was filmed. In recent years, a number of other short films with stick figures of different filmmakers have emerged. These are usually programmed as vector graphics in Flash, eg " XiaoXiao " by the Chinese artist Zhu Zhiqiang or "The Course" by Will Saunders.

Also, game developers have discovered stick figures for you, such as Istvan Orosi with the Flash game series " Stickman Sam", Robin Allen with " Hapland ", "N " by Metanet software or Zhu Zhiqianq with XiaoXiao.

In sports science stick figure representations of kinematic acquisition and analysis of movement sequences and for clarification of movements are used. With video cameras sporting activities can be captured and converted into stick figure representations with special computer software. The conversion is based on models that divide the human body into a different number of segments. Hodgins used for the representation of a gymnast, for example, 15 segments, the much more complex " Jack " model 69 segments.