Need to make a webcomic, but have trouble transforming your scribbles into recognizable figures? No problem!
Stick figures are easy, simple, and will get your point across without the pressures of drawing "real" art to a deadline. Used as a stopgap in some
webcomics whenever the artist doesn't have the time/energy to draw his or her normal characters.
Doing this as an "off-art" day in a normal comic is acceptable, though do it too much and you may annoy your fanbase, who came expecting better of you.
Choosing to do this full-time means that the plot, characterization, and/or jokes have to stand up on their own two line-drawn feet. If your writing is not up to scratch, you'll sink into the murky, stagnant waters of the Internet to join the rest of the ignored. Of course, if it
is, you'll reach Geek Nirvana.
Put examples in alphabetical order.
Examples
Full-Time Comics
- Anti-Heros
: Heavily inspired by The Order of the Stick.
- Cyanide and Happiness is a Dead Baby Comedy drawn by four different guys.
- Done in printed comics by Matt Feazel (a quite skilled artist) in Cynicalman, to demonstrate that anyone who can write can do a comic.
- Greenroom uses colorful stick figures with unique features to signify the characters' personality. Better Than It Sounds, in my opinion.
- Also done in printed comics by the French artist Lewis Trondheim, best known are his Mister O and Mister I series.
- Similarly, Keychain Of Creation. The author freely admits that his webcomic is like Order of the Stick, but with Exalted instead of Dungeons and Dragons. This editor, who has read both, feels that all they have in common (apart from being Stick Figure Comics inspired by tabletop RPGs) is that they are both consistently excellent.
- electric melon, a webcomic of two parts: a story arc and the funnier gag a day comics.
- Legendary, a webcomic about console [=RPGs=], whose art is directly influenced by Order of the Stick. When it still updated, that is.
- Mountain Time fits this trope to a T. A very inconsistent, rudimentary T.
- The Order Of The Stick. An unusual case, in that the stick figure style is a deliberate artistic choice rather than the result of the creator's limited drawing skill. This becomes fairly obvious when considering the astonishing range of expressions Rich Burlew imparts to stick-figure faces, or the sheer level of detail in many panels (check out, for example, the first panel of this comic or this one or this one).
- pictures for sad children
- Stickfodder sets itself to xkcd standards, "and constantly fails to come close to."
- Stickman And Cube. The title pretty much sums it up.
- StickManStickMan is an early example.
- The Symmetrical Breadpazoid (whose unusual title is a reference to Teen Girl Squad) is by troper Anthony Mercer.
- (tsuduku...) has a random stick figure guy named "Guy," a circle named "Circle," and so on. Some characters, like Evil Thing, were scribbled out once long ago and have become copy/pasted like self-made clip art ever since.
- The supremely geeky xkcd is both an exemplar and a subversion, since the author actually draws more complicated scenes.
- Lampshaded in one strip.
- In one early comic, he drew some facial features on his stick figures. They... weren't that good. Maybe he's just bad at drawing faces, or doesn't like drawing complex drawings of people.
Off-art Comics
Other Media
- The MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing, despite being a videogame, is pure 100 percent Stick Figures. This mostly started out because the creator, Jick, couldn't draw anything better.
- Stickin' Around is a rare example of a stick figure TV show.
- Stickman Exodus [1] is a Web Animation Dead Baby Comedy about the trials and tribulations of the two-dimensional.
- The rulebook of the free RPG Risus is illustrated with stick figures, which fits well with both the extremely simple rule-system and the generally whimsical nature of the game.
- StickPage contains dozens of stick-figure animations and games.
- StickDeath gruesome flash and gif movies featuring primitive stick figures.
