{ "id": "epgggwayv7", "slug": "stick-figure-epgggwayv7", "title": "Stick figure", "updated": "2026-10-25", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.visual", "label": "Visual arts and design", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.visual" }, { "id": "culture.visual.drawing-printmaking", "label": "Drawing and printmaking", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.visual.drawing-printmaking" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.culture", "label": "Non-geographic · Not dated: Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.culture", "path": [ { "id": "geo.nongeo", "label": "Non-geographic", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate", "label": "Non-geographic · Not dated", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.culture" } ] } ], "excerpt": "A stick figure, also called a matchstick figure, is a simple drawing of a person with a circle head and line body, arms, and legs, found from prehistoric rock art to internet animation.", "snippet": "A stick figure, also called a matchstick figure, is a simple drawing of a person with a circle head and line body, arms, and legs, found from prehistoric rock art to internet animation.", "node": "culture.visual.drawing-printmaking", "markdown": "# Stick figure\n\nA stick figure is a basic depiction of a person, made by drawing the head as a circle and representing the body, arms, and legs with single lines.[1](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/stick-figure) In British English the form is also called a matchstick figure[1](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/stick-figure), and the same circle-and-lines scheme can represent animals as well as humans[2](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/stick%20figure). Stick figures appear in prehistoric rock art, children's drawings, pictograms, psychological testing, and internet animation, and their economy of means has made them a default way of representing a human being across very different contexts.\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Definition | Head drawn as a circle; body, arms, and legs drawn as lines; UK also matchstick figure[1](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/stick-figure) |\n| Scope | The same scheme represents humans or animals, head by a circle and the rest of the body by straight lines[2](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/stick%20figure) |\n| Rock art | The \"Stickman\" is described as the world's most prevalent petroglyph, with variations in belly, arms, and head form[3](https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/stickman/) |\n| Modern signage | The Nippon Design Center created the first full set of sporting pictograms for the Tokyo 1964 Olympics[4](https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/japanese-pictograms-exhibition-japan-house) |\n| Design lineage | The stick figure of modern infographics is traced to early 20th century woodcuts associated with Gerd Arntz[5](https://austinkleon.com/2008/02/12/gerd-arntz-and-the-woodcut-origins-of-the-stick-figure/) |\n| Psychological testing | The human figure drawing test has been used as a psychodiagnostic method for almost 100 years[6](https://ceskoslovenskapsychologie.cz/index.php/csps/article/view/152) |\n| Digital datasets | The Amateur Drawings Dataset, collected through a public animation demo, contains over 178,000 amateur drawings with bounding boxes, segmentation masks, and joint annotations[7](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12741) |\n\n## Form and recognition\n\nThe stick figure reduces a person to a circle and a handful of strokes. Studies of how people read drawings of the human figure show that viewers recognize widely used artistic conventions, including the stick figure as a stand-in for the body, and that they can see simple elements such as lines or circles as standing for more elaborate body parts like legs or heads[8](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9996750/). Because it relies minimally on language, drawing gives researchers a way to observe perception, conceptual knowledge, planning, and motor control independently of linguistic skill[8](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9996750/).\n\nThe scheme extends beyond humans: a circle for the head and straight lines for the rest of the body can depict other living creatures as well[9](https://infovis-wiki.net/wiki/Teaching%3ATUW_-_UE_InfoVis_WS_2008/09_-_Gruppe_07_-_Aufgabe_1_-_Stick_Figure). By sketching straightforward stick figure key poses, complete with graphical motion paths and timing, users can show what a character does, and the system can then rebuild these automatically into continuous 3D motion[9](https://infovis-wiki.net/wiki/Teaching%3ATUW_-_UE_InfoVis_WS_2008/09_-_Gruppe_07_-_Aufgabe_1_-_Stick_Figure); a stick-figure sketch abstraction has likewise served to pose a 3D character within a sketch-based animation system[10](https://cgl.ethz.ch/Downloads/Publications/Papers/2015/Hahn15a/Hahn15a.pdf).\n\n## Ancient and rock art\n\nStick-like human figures long predate modern drawing conventions. Accounts of internet animation history place the stickman in the earliest prehistoric human art, where it served as a basic symbol for a human being[11](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stick-figure-animations). In [Paleolithic](https://www.edgepedia.org/paleolithic) cave art, references to the human form are largely limited to handprints, stencils, and simplified, essentially faceless stick figures, such as those in the Sulawesi hunting scene, where the human figures are often minuscule in comparison with the wildlife in the same frame[12](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.042). A study of anatomy in Archaic Greek art states that the provenance of human anatomy in art dates back more than 5,000 years, to cave art consisting of stick figures with exaggerated limbs[13](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0185%2820000415%29261%3A2%3C50%3A%3AAID-AR4%3E3.0.CO%3B2-0).\n\n**The petroglyph record.** According to the Penn Museum's *Expedition* magazine, the so-called \"Stickman\" is the most widespread petroglyph on Earth, appearing across the globe and depicted in the form of a stick-like human with a head, two arms raised and extended outward, and two legs extended downward, marked by male genitalia. Its variations include a belly, an \"inner tube\" around the belly, and differences in the arms, while the head is usually bulbous but can also be a cup, a bird, or two horns[3](https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/stickman/). The article's authors, Marinus Anthony Van Der Sluijs and Anthony L. Peratt, attribute these varieties to a time-evolving nonlinear evolution of toroids pinched in a single plasma column[3](https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/stickman/).\n\nStick-bodied human figures also appear in the rock art of specific cultures. Humanlike figures with stick bodies are a common motif of Hohokam rock art, frequently occurring as petroglyphs in the South Mountains, with diverse details including headdresses, facial features, hands, and postures[14](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gxpftd).\n\n## Pictograms and public signage\n\nThe stick figure of modern infographics and signage has a documented design lineage. The form used in modern infographics is traced to the early 20th century woodcut, associated with the artist Gerd Arntz, who wanted to strip art of bourgeois preciousness[5](https://austinkleon.com/2008/02/12/gerd-arntz-and-the-woodcut-origins-of-the-stick-figure/).\n\nThe art director and graphic designer Daikoku Daigo, curator of the exhibition \"Pictograms: Iconic Japanese Designs\" at Japan House in London, traces the pictogram's story to [Otto Neurath](https://www.edgepedia.org/otto-neurath), whose designs often featured motifs and themes used to visually communicate information[4](https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/japanese-pictograms-exhibition-japan-house). Pictograms used at the Tokyo 1964 Olympics represented a new vision in which people from entirely different cultures could communicate with one another, and their functionality and design quality were tested on a global stage[4](https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/japanese-pictograms-exhibition-japan-house).\n\nThe stick figure also serves as a starting point in pictogram design practice: the process of creating a pictogram begins with sketching a rough outline, often a simple stick figure[15](https://assets.japanhouselondon.uk/production/uploads/2025/11/Pictograms_Large-Print-Guide_Digital-use-FINAL.pdf).\n\n## Animation and digital tools\n\nThe simplicity of creating and animating a stickman has inspired thousands of stick figure animations on the internet, and it has been a component of popular viral hits such as \"Stick Figure Death Theatre\" and the webcomic xkcd[11](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stick-figure-animations).\n\n**Animating drawings.** A research system automatically animates children's drawings of the human figure and is robust to the variance inherent in these depictions; its public website, the Animated Drawings Demo, has been used by millions of people[7](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12741). The Amateur Drawings Dataset collected through the demo contains over 178,000 amateur drawings with corresponding user-accepted character bounding boxes, segmentation masks, and joint location annotations[7](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12741).\n\n**Limits of the form.** Stick figures are not always the most informative representation. In an experiment by Jessica K. Hodgins, James F. O'Brien, and Jack Tumblin, then researchers working on human motion animation, subjects viewed paired motion sequences rendered with the same geometric model and judged whether the motions were the same or different; for the three types of motion variation tested, sensitivity scores showed that subjects were better able to observe changes with a polygonal model than with the stick figure model[16](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.07489). In computer vision, stick-figure limbs built from 2D keypoints do not account for occlusion (objects blocking others from view in an image) information that is often inherent in an image; a representation using opaque 3D limbs preserves occlusion, and a pose defined by limb angles rather than joint positions is independent of camera viewpoint[17](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09893).\n\n## Psychological testing\n\nDrawing techniques involving human figures have been part of psychologists' test batteries for most of the past century[18](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002244059190026N), and the human figure drawing test as a psychodiagnostic method has been used for almost 100 years[6](https://ceskoslovenskapsychologie.cz/index.php/csps/article/view/152). The Draw-A-Person method associated with Karen Machover's 1949 test asks a person to draw a human figure and interprets features of the drawing[19](https://www.personaramic.com/en/tests/projective-tests).\n\nBecause very limited written or spoken language is required, practitioners have used these tests with autistic or severely hyperactive children, nonreaders, and non-English speakers[18](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002244059190026N). Their use has limits, however: a review in the literature is titled \"Children's human figure drawings do not measure intellectual ability\"[18](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002244059190026N), and in analyses of children's fine motor, gross motor, social, cognitive, and language skills, only fine motor skill was an independent predictor of scores on the Draw-a-Person intelligence assessment, the DAP:IQ[20](https://openalex.org/works/W2772367670).\n\nA comparison of three scoring systems, those of Goodenough and Harris (1963), Naglieri (1988), and Ayres and Reid (1966), found that all three correlated significantly and at similar levels with the WISC-R and WISC-III intelligence scales, suggesting that the shorter and more recent Naglieri technique may save clinicians time and effort[21](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/073428290101900301). More recently, automatic assessment of human figure drawings has been developed for tasks such as diagnosing autism spectrum disorder, with explanation frameworks that measure the contribution of individual drawing parts to a model's decision[22](https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18260).\n\n## Children's drawings and culture\n\nChildren's human figure drawings pass through recognizable stages before reaching the stick figure form, including a \"tadpole\" stage, the first type of visually recognizable human figure drawing described for children of Europe and North America[23](https://www.early-pictures.ch/porte2/text/en/2-4.html). The endpoint itself varies by culture. Aborigine children draw people as semi-circles while western children draw stick figures, and body shape in children's figure drawings has been described as rounded, typical of western cultures; stick-like, in some African cultures; rectangular, in some Islamic cultures; and triangular, again in some African cultures[24](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/different-strokes/99614.article).\n\nA study of self-proclaimed non-artists found that participants commonly treated \"I can't even draw a stick figure\" as a light, everyday statement about drawing ability, underscoring how the stick figure serves as the conventional baseline of minimal drawing skill[25](https://aimsmddc.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/i-cant-draw-a-stick-figure-a-study-of-the-drawing-abilities-of-self-proclaimed-non-artists/).\n\n## References\n\n1. [Stick figure definition, Cambridge English Dictionary](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/stick-figure)\n2. [Stick figure definition, Vocabulary.com](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/stick%20figure)\n3. [Stickman, Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum (Van Der Sluijs and Peratt, 2010)](https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/stickman/)\n4. [Get the picture? A new exhibition explores the beautiful simplicity of Japanese pictograms, Wallpaper*](https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/japanese-pictograms-exhibition-japan-house)\n5. [Gerd Arntz and the woodcut origins of the stick figure, Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2008/02/12/gerd-arntz-and-the-woodcut-origins-of-the-stick-figure/)\n6. [Humane figure drawing test: interpretive paradigms, Ceskoslovenska psychologie](https://ceskoslovenskapsychologie.cz/index.php/csps/article/view/152)\n7. [A Method for Animating Children's Drawings of the Human Figure, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12741)\n8. [Human perception and machine vision reveal rich latent structure in human figure drawings, PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9996750/)\n9. [Stick Figure, InfoVis:Wiki teaching page](https://infovis-wiki.net/wiki/Teaching%3ATUW_-_UE_InfoVis_WS_2008/09_-_Gruppe_07_-_Aufgabe_1_-_Stick_Figure)\n10. [Sketch Abstractions for Character Posing, ETH Zurich](https://cgl.ethz.ch/Downloads/Publications/Papers/2015/Hahn15a/Hahn15a.pdf)\n11. [Stick Figure Animations, Know Your Meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stick-figure-animations)\n12. [Cave art reveals human nature, Current Biology](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.042)\n13. [Anatomy and the art of Archaic Greece, The Anatomical Record](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0185%2820000415%29261%3A2%3C50%3A%3AAID-AR4%3E3.0.CO%3B2-0)\n14. [Landscape of the Spirits: Hohokam Rock Art at South Mountain Park, JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gxpftd)\n15. [Drawing Pictograms, Japan House London large print guide](https://assets.japanhouselondon.uk/production/uploads/2025/11/Pictograms_Large-Print-Guide_Digital-use-FINAL.pdf)\n16. [Perception of Human Motion with Different Geometric Models, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.07489)\n17. [Learning from Abstract Images: on the Importance of Occlusion in a Minimalist Encoding of Human Poses, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09893)\n18. [Draw-a-Person techniques: Tests in search of a construct, ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002244059190026N)\n19. [Human Figure Drawing Test (Machover Method), Personaramic](https://www.personaramic.com/en/tests/projective-tests)\n20. [What Does the DAP:IQ Measure?, OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/works/W2772367670)\n21. [Children's Human Figure Drawings as Measures of Intelligence: The Comparative Validity of Three Scoring Systems, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/073428290101900301)\n22. [PCEvE: Part Contribution Evaluation Based Model Explanation for Human Figure Drawing Assessment and Beyond, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18260)\n23. [Graphic aspects of early human figure drawings, Porte Archive](https://www.early-pictures.ch/porte2/text/en/2-4.html)\n24. [Different strokes, Times Higher Education](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/different-strokes/99614.article)\n25. [I Can't Draw a Stick Figure: A Study of the Drawing Abilities of Self-Proclaimed Non-Artists, JAIMS](https://aimsmddc.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/i-cant-draw-a-stick-figure-a-study-of-the-drawing-abilities-of-self-proclaimed-non-artists/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Visual arts and design › Drawing and printmaking*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Stick figure\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Stick figure](https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7](https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Stick figure\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/stick-figure-epgggwayv7. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "A stick figure, also called a matchstick figure, is a simple drawing of a person with a circle head and line body, arms, and legs, found from prehistoric rock art to internet animation." }