Stick Figure Comic - Television Tropes & Idioms

As laboriously crafted by fine artisan hands over the course of an entire lifetime.

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.

More profoundly, a stick figure, with its lack of definite appearance, age or even gender (though stick women are typically equipped with Tertiary Sexual Characteristics), is the ultimate Everyman: every audience member can project themselves into them.

Examples

Full-Time Comics

A Beginner's Guide To The End Of The Universe. Stick figures mashed with GIS Syndrome.
Anti-Heroes: Heavily inspired by The Order of the Stick and proudly admitting it.
Awkward Moments A stick-figure comic that has similar artwork to Cyanide and Happiness.
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.
Dubious Is My Niche, a Journal Comic / Slice of Life comic on deviantART.
Greenroom uses colorful stick figures with unique features to signify the characters' personality. Better Than It Sounds, in my opinion.
Insanity Corp started out as a (normally) single-panel, gag-a-day, 5-times-a-week stickman comic. However, the author's professed inability to keep things horribly simple led to the addition of backgrounds and colors early on in its creation. It now updates "Frequently" (three times weekly, on average) because of other projects the author is working on.
The Incredible and Awe-Inspiring Serial Adventures of the Amazing Plasma-Man is a weekly updating superhero comic which makes use of realistic stick figures. If one will pardon the oxymoron.
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 & Dragons.
- While they both have similar art styles, this ends in comic 319, where the character art gains proper arms and legs. This change is explained in the plot by Marena and Secret learning to see the reality differently while learning sorcery.
electric melon, a webcomic of two parts: a story arc and the funnier gag a day comics.
Hyperbole And A Half
John - An intentional example as the creator was trying to evoke the look of an amateur comic, although often the comic will suddenly become a completely different style for a single panel.
Legendary, a webcomic about console RPGs, whose art is directly influenced by Order of the Stick. When it still updated, that is.
Lynion15 has gained a well sized following for their stick figure parodies of Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3.
Magicandphysics - Reasoning behind it is unknown as of now.
A Moment Of Peace: A sweet post-apocalyptic romantic slice of life that involves monsters and gods. While gods and monsters sometimes have more meat on them, all of the human characters are stick figures.
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).
- Also, almost certainly the Trope Codifier for the full-time stick figure comic.
pictures for sad children
RPGeneric: Heavily inspired by The Order of the Stick though using more effects.
Servants Of The Imperium. A Warhammer 40,000 webcomic that draws some influence from The Order of the Stick.
The Sliding Scale Comic: A stick figure comic about role playing games.
Spikeboy Another example whose art style seems to be based of The Order of the Stick, Spikeboy is about superheroes. Who all live in the same apartment complex. Basically, a superhero sit-comic.
Stick Figure Hamlet. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Stickfodder sets itself to xkcd standards, "and constantly fails to come close to [those standards]."
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.
Three People Get It is an often NSFW (dialogue) comic strip which pokes fun at anyone and anything. The author frequently includes notes indicating where an idea came from, which is often humorous and occasionally insightful.
(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.
UnCONventional is a comic about the staff of a fictional Anime Convention. The main cast is portrayed as clothed stick figures (with hair, facial hair, and other distinguishing features), while background characters are often portrayed as plain stick figures (although they often are given clothes as well in later comics). The artist chose stick figures so the comic would "look as different from Anime as humanly possible."
The Way of the Metagamer: Started out copying The Order of the Stick, kept the art style after Jumping the Shark.
The Whiteboard has two variations. One, since the author can't draw people (It's a furry comic), they are usually drawn as very simplified with their heads floating above their bodies. The only features are eyes and hair. Second, on days when Doc N doesn't have the time to post a regular comic and/or days the server fails to post a regular comic, a filler strip goes up with the characters drawn in a simpler style. Once the current storyline gets back on track, the filler strips are taken offline. The characters once hung a lampshade on the fact that they only have one pose in the filler strips.
The Word Weary characters are called "R2-D2 Elves" by one of the protagonists. The characters' bodies are drawn as rectangles with dome heads with pointy-toed legs . Women have two "u" shapes on their chests to represent breasts and stick arms that come out of their shoulders. Male characters' arms seem to come out of their clavicles. It's Better Than It Sounds.
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.
  - Likely not the first one, although that may depend on your definition of good.
The Dog House Diaries: which can be viewed here has its own unique brand of stick figure.

Off-art Comics

The stick-figure weeks from Sluggy Freelance.
Megatokyo's infamous Shirt Guy Dom strips, a direct reference to the above.
xkcd's use of stick figures is parodied in this strip of Irregular Webcomic!.
Scandal Sheet! has been known to engage in weeks of "Stick Figure Theater". If you've ever wanted to see someone draw a stick figure Sasquatch...
Some spamusers on Spamusement do this, depending on their mood. (Others never do.)
The KAMics does this occasionally, usually under the title Stick Figure Life.
Family Circus, whenever Billy has to fill in.
The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! did this once after completing an 18-month story arc. Subverted in the last panel.

Other Media

The series Animator vs. Animation uses stick figures.
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.
StickmanExodus 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.
There is also Stickguy: The RPG Where all the characters are to be drawn as stickguys.
StickPage contains dozens of stick-figure animations and games.
StickDeath gruesome flash and gif movies featuring primitive stick figures.
The Xiao Xiao series of Flash animations.
The introductory cartoons in What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?. Also, Stick Boy.

Strong Family Resemblance

Sprite Comic

Webcomics

Transformation Comic

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Examples