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moonlitcomet · 9 months

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A simple, not fully comprehensive guide to stick figure community art styles you might find on the internet:

Despite being such a simple object, something universal to humanity when drawing a simple person, there's a lot of ways to depict a stick figure. Almost infinite ones. And some of these ways to draw a stick figure have developed into entire communities; just by looking at the way someone draws a "stick figure" character, you can probably tell what corner of the internet they've stuck their nose in!

RHGs/Dojo Duelists

Probably what first comes to mind when you think of those fancy stick fight animations. These guys have been around for longer than many people have been alive, having been founded in 2005 by Stone. Many people who started out animating with RHG eventually moved on to become professional animators for cartoons, movies, and even anime.

RHGs and Dojo Duelists are often animated using symbols and objects in Flash, creating a distinct "segmented" appearance. When up close, they often have hand drawn facial features, which adds more to the style of the artist and animator.

Fans of RHG and Hyun's Dojo are often inspired to animate or create colorful and violent stories based on these characters, and quite a few of them seem to find old men incredibly sexy.

An interesting fact about the RHG style and its fanart is that most RHG fanart is in a style commonly referred to as glorified stickfigures, with simple, full bodies and detailed features. I am unsure as to the origin of this art style, but if anyone knows where it first originated, I would love to know.

Gildedguy's Glorified Stickmen

A bit of a side-community to Dojo and RHG is that of Gildedguy's community, who I am happy to represent. Gildedguy started animating in 2006, but truly became more of an internet sensation in 2011 with the release of Slush Invaders. Gildedguy the character made his first official debut in 2015 with Gildedguy vs. Fry, a speedbattle[though he made an appearance in the Slush Invaders game before that.]. Since then he has been releasing at least one new big project every year, with the quality of each animation ramping up as time goes on.

Gildedguy's art style involves large heads and stumpier proportions, with enormous eyes. His style is extremely unique for a stickfigure artist, and you can almost always tell when someone has been inspired by his art and animations.

Gildedguy has a very interactive community, and he has inspired many people that I know to start animation, be it when he first started with Slush Invaders or even as recently as Story 7. Many members of his community, myself included, do not find themselves interacting with many other stick figure communities, though overlap between Gildedguy and almost any other large stick figure community is also very prominent and common.

Animator vs. Animation [Alan Becker]

The source of nostalgia for many my age, these little stickfigures have kept a chokehold on their corner of the internet for nearly two decades, with the first Animator vs. Animation being released one year after RHG's founding, in 2006. Ever since then, AVA and its sidestories of AVM strike inspiration and excitement into the hearts of its fans. Many children and adults alike love the stories of these stickfigures, with simple but nuanced characters and visual stories that anyone can enjoy.

Unlike with many RHGs and Duelists, AVA stickfigures are hand drawn and have more fluid and bendy limbs, and have no facial features except in the case of a single Youtube short as of the time of this being posted.

Fans of AVA sometimes draw in the art style of the source material, but here on Tumblr, I've also seen a lot of them giving them more detailed bodies and faces, as well as clothing and hairstyles. Many copycat animators on youtube exist with nowhere near the level of charm and love put into Alan Becker's AVA.

Henry Stickmin

I'm not actually fully familiar with Henry Stickmin, its games, or its characters, but it's hard to find any other stickfigure style as distinct as this one. With detailed heads, hands, and feet but stick-thin bodies, Henry Stickmin stands out while also sticking to the stickfigure art style.

Henry Stickmin first debuted in 2008 with Breaking The Bank, a point-and-click adventure game.

Dick Figures

Dick Figures is a crass, adult-oriented short animation series on YouTube, which debuted in 2010 and released a feature-length film in 2013. The shorts are almost always immature and vulgar, calling to the times of the internet that they originated from.

Dick Figures features hand drawn stickfigures with stick-thin bodies and detailed faces.

I've found that fans of this series do not often cross over into the internet territories of other Stickfigure communities, and instead spend more time in meme communities.

Marikin Online 4 [MO4]

MO4 is a Japanese RPG game with a very niche and dedicated art community behind it. While Marikin Online 1, 2, and 3 did technically exist, they were never fully finished games and are no longer available to the public. From what I can tell, MO4 first released around 2018, and I can find little other information about the series' history itself in a cohesive place.

The characters are unusual and distinct, with one of them even somehow landing on the Sexypedia. They have gray or white skin with few body features aside from their faces, and many of them will be adorned in fancy billowing clothing.

I can't say much for the game aside from the fact that it is intended for mature audiences, and has dark themes such as abuse and sexual harassment.

You'll find that many fanartists for this game are Japanese or Chinese, and may be difficult to find outside the community itself, but once you find one you'll almost definitely stumble into 20 more.

Countryhumans

One of if not the most controversial groups of stickfigure communities on this list, Countryhumans are character designs based on countries and historical regimes. They have distinct character designs with facial markings based on their respective flags.

Countryhumans were likely founded in 2017 in a Russian forum, almost definitely based upon or at least inspired by the 2009 Polandball comic. As is the nature of depicting entire countries as characters [IE Hetalia and Polandball itself], this community wound up creating many offensive caricatures of countries and citizens of the countries it represents, and is frequently put under criticism for doing so, as well as shipping said countries with other countries that have warred, invaded, or forced oppressive regimes upon others. The sexualization of regimes such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and ISIS are especially causative for this.

Due to its controversial nature, many stickfigure artists - especially east Asian artists - around the world have wound up blacklisting Countryhuman community members and artists from interacting with them.

Mid-Fight Masses and related characters

Mid-Fight Masses, and its related characters, were a phenomenon released in the early modding days of FNF in 2021. While these characters were not created for the mod - instead being made as early as when their creator, Dokki Doodlez, was 9 or 10 years old - they were popularized in the FNF mod featuring them, and became somewhat of a sensation, being some of the most popular characters in the fandom.

Sarvente, Ruv, and other characters in the universe sparked their own microfandom outside of FNF, with many new and young artists creating characters based on their distinct designs. With colorful facial markings, detailed clothing, and blank white eyes, many stickfigure characters created in 2021-present follow these design traits. They stand out from other popular stickfigure communities in the sense that many of these characters very rarely are shown committing violent acts, and have much more whimsical and fantastical lore.

#mine #stickfigures #long post #had a sudden urge to go autism mode #this isn't fully comprehensive by any means but it encompasses many of the bigger stickfig communities i've come across!#there's also a couple communities i refuse to add on principle of me just hating their creators #take a shot for every time i say distinct in this post

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floofballsammy · 1 month

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My go at a stick oc. This one was a while ago and really my first attempts. But i'm happy with this.

Anyway, meet Razz. He's just your average stick. Well, as average as you can get with powers you barely know how to use. He currently isnt interested in figuring them out either, he'd rather live a normal life. His friend does use him as a glorified flashlight though.

Razz is also taller than normal sticks, and seems more detailed than a stickfigure should be. He claims he's just built different.

Again, dont really have everything worked out rn.

#ava oc #stick oc #stickfigure oc #ava #i really dont know how to tag this #Sammy's stick art #to cover all aspects of the alan becker universe in one tag #my art

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mintbees · 1 year

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How long does it take you to make your artworks? It looks so majestic so i imagine it takes hours

though i never properly timed it id say every piece takes about 5-6 hours overall? though i take a pretty slow approach to art, i know a lot of artists have that "work until 3AM till the work is done" mentality but i dont do that part because i cant and simply dont want to.

i work in bits of 1-2 hours at a time and the first hour or so of most drawings is meticulous planning of the composition and color of the drawing i want to make.

^^^ like this. when i get a drawing idea i already know what type of composition and colors i want to do, but its a waste of time and energy to work those things out in the final drawing so i spend an hour just drawing glorified stickfigures over and over until i know excactly what i want in the finished drawing

especially in more complex compositions like these two drawings, it helps make the actual drawing process itself pretty smooth sailing because i already have a pretty good idea of what the end result will look like, and that im sure the idea is worth working out (lots of drawing ideas die in this phase because i end up not feeling it)

it's a boring process but i think this is the thing that makes my art appeal to people. my artstyle isnt very unique but the main thing people compliment is my colors and sense of atmosphere, both of which get fine-tuned first thing.

so yeah thats how i make my drawings so "majestic"! lots of planning and reading a lot about compositions

#thanks for the ask this was rlly sweet! hope i explained it kinda decently i didnt wanna ramble too much #composition is something a lot of artists tend to ignore but the industry pros use a lot for a reason

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smallbluelight · 2 years

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The few instances I remember where I hear "You can draw? I can only draw a stickfigure."

As someone who draws a lot of glorified stickfigure art, how do I respond to this

It's become a little annoying

Thank you @inksandpensblog for reminding me of the pain

#art #digital art #mystuff #the stars were tiring to draw so I've decided they're just optional clips #why else does this statement exist #most of what I draw are stickfigures man #shortcomics

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zombiefish · 5 years

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Yo, currently I'm into this fandom called MARIKINonline4 and its GREAT! I love these highly glorified stickfigures to bits, my small heart can't take it. TwT

I thank @prin-con for introducing me into this small, but amazing fandom!

#marikinonline4 #mo4 #sigukin #my art

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mandy-malady · 6 years

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They say that to better learn a subject, you should try to teach someone about it. Writing a tutorial might be a less anxiety-inducing way to do that. So without further ado…

Anyone who’s spent most of their lives drawing has probably encountered the “I’m so jealous that you can draw. I can only do stick figures.” (Or “I can’t even draw stick figures,” or something very similar). I’m of the belief that if you can do stick figures, you can draw. For example:

This is where I begin every time I draw a character. Check it, they’re glorified stick figures. Think of it as a stand-in for the skeleton, and you’re “building up” the layers of the body from this skeleton. Like those anatomy books you may or may not have encountered in school. They have transparent pages of different structures of the body: skeleton, muscles, and skin.

Do note that this is my current working progress for my drawings. I’m no master of the arts, so this is by no means The Way of drawing, this is my way.

Step 1- STICK FIGURES!

Start out by brainstorming and lightly sketching various poses. Start doing practice ‘gesture drawings‘ to get better at anatomy and posing figures.

Here are a couple other resources for anatomy reference:

https://www.pinterest.com/gonbou87/anatomy-reference/

http://fucktonofanatomyreferencesreborn.tumblr.com/

Notice how starting out these all look very familiar? Almost like stick figures? This is the foundation / skeleton we will build off of. Which is why I immediately disagree with anyone who says “I can’t draw anything but stick figures.”

Step 2- Fleshing Out!

Exactly as the name implies, this step is where we plop some meat onto the bones. This is also where you can start to tell if one or two poses stand out among the others, which flows into our next step:

Step 3 – Zero in!

So you’ve chosen one or two poses to focus on. We’re going to flip these horizontally. Doing this allows us to look at our drawing with fresh eyes, making mistakes in anatomy more obvious. If you’re using pencil & paper, try holding your sketch up to a mirror to achieve the same effect.

After correcting anything that needs it, I start to work in the details. I begin to find myself telling this character’s story. Or rather, I allow them to tell me as I go along. Now I begin to zone out and go wild with costume ideas and hairstyles. I often like to make many copies of the same pose and try different things out until I come across something I like. Keep in mind how clothing and hair drape around the body. Remember that references are your friend!

Now it’s time to change the color of the sketch. Do this by locking the transparency of the layer and going over with a brush color of your choice. Blue and Red are most often used in sketching. Doing this helps us out in our next step by being able to distinguish new lines from old ones.

So here I’ve got a few different characters to choose from. I like the farthest on the left the best so that’ll be the one I’m completing.

Step 4 – Inking!

Lower the opacity of the layer (I’ve lowered mine here to about 28%) and create a new layer above it, named line-art. You can name it anything you like, Mary, Bob, but I find that line-art is simple enough for me. (If you’re going for under-achiever of the year, you can neglect to name your layers. I’ve gotten into the bad habit of doing this.) Taking two seconds to name your layers is a good habit to get into. It helps when you’ve got several layers, trust me on this.

You can flip your drawing back if you wish. I like the figure facing this direction, so I’m going to keep her like this.

If you’re using pen, pencil, and paper, then it’s time to bring in your ink pen or whatever tool you’re using to ink with. Use tracing paper over your sketch to get a clean line drawing.

Step 5 – Ditch the sketch!

Yep. Throw it out, erase it, delete it, save it for posterity, etc. We don’t need it anymore. Now it’s us and our neat(ish?) line-art.

Go over your lines and vary the line thickness in places that need more emphasis. For example, I like thickening lines on objects that overlap others to make them stand out or ‘pop’ more. Start to work in your details. It’s up to you how detailed you want your drawing to be.

This is the step where I *finally* draw the face. I enjoy doing faces and eyes the most so I do that last as a sort of carrot-on-a-stick for myself. At this point I keep adding detail to it until I’m satisfied with how it looks.

That’s it for today’s lesson! The next tutorial will cover adding color to our drawing. If you already have a process that works for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. If there’s anything that I didn’t cover, or something you have questions about, please be sure to comment as well!

Until Next time!

5 Steps Beyond Stick Figures : A Tutorial They say that to better learn a subject, you should try to teach someone about it. Writing a tutorial might be a less anxiety-inducing way to do that.

#digital art #illustration #paint tool sai #tutorial

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