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In school I was a doodler. I would sit there in class and draw for hours. I would draw anything I could think of. For a while I even had a series of creatures I called Furballs, who were essentially fuzzy smurfs that hated everything. I also drew a lot of stick men. Hundreds upon hundreds of stick men who would ravage the paper world they lived in daily, leaving little more than scorched paper in their wake.
Some things never change, kids still draw stick men, and it would seem that stick men still have an unquenchable appetite for carnage. What has changed is the format. Now instead of loose leaf paper, stick men shred virtual worlds in highly stylized flash animations. Today I would like to pay tribute to some of my favorite animations.
Several years ago I got my first taste of stickmen on the web with Xiao Xiao, a truly classic series that really raised the bar for stick animators everywhere. More recently I noticed the Blue 2 team, who have created the delicious "Unglued".
In addition, many games are being created using nothing more than stick men. The challenging "N" was released not too long ago, and it is pretty fun once you get into it. Another fun little time killer is Bowman, which is simply a nice archery game that is as addictive as it is simple.
Although a lot of people may not see the beauty in a couple of stick people ripping each others heads off, I actually think that this is great artistic exercise. It helps artists get a feel for how things should look when they are moving. Plus, it's fun to make, and fun to watch. Is it art? Maybe, maybe not. But love it or hate it, stickmen aren't going anywhere for a while.
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