General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Xiao Xiao (小小作品)

Xiao Xiao (小小作品, "a little bit of creative work") is a Chinese internet Flash animation series of martial-arts fights between stick figures, created beginning in 2000 by the Chinese Flash animator Zhu Zhiqiang (朱志强).¹^•² The series made Zhu the best-known figure of China's early-2000s Flash scene, where he was called "China's number one Flash animator" (中国第一闪客), and its fight choreography, circulated on the Chinese portal 闪客帝国 (FlashEmpire) and on Newgrounds, became a template copied by stick-figure animators worldwide.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Creator	Zhu Zhiqiang (朱志强), from Jilin City, Jilin; self-taught, previously worked in a printing plant⁴^•³
First work	《独孤求败》, completed April 2000, made with Painter and originally in AVI format; first use of the stick-figure protagonist¹^•⁴
Signature episode	《小小No.3》, completed mid-2001 after about seven months of intermittent work; a 1 minute 15 second stick-figure fight⁴^•⁵^•³
Newgrounds reach	Xiao Xiao No. 1, uploaded February 1, 2002, recorded 3,194,412 views and a 4.55/5.00 score⁶
Episode count	Disputed across sources: 8, 9, 10, or 12 works¹^•⁷^•²
Copyright case	Nike dispute, 2003–2006: first-instance award of 300,000 yuan to Zhu, reversed on appeal¹
Status	Adobe Flash reached end-of-life in December 2020; Newgrounds offers the Newgrounds Player for legacy Flash content⁶

Spoilers

Episodes and chronology

The documented works include 《独孤求败》 (2000), the interactive 《过关斩将》, 《小小作品3号》 and its updated version, 《小小特警》 (No. 4), 《小小作品五号》, 《小小作品六号》, 《毁灭者》 and 《毁灭者 II》, 《小小电影》, and 《小小9号作品》; Zhu's archived TOM Flash channel page lists nine entries.⁴ Weblio states that nine works were made between 2000 and 2003, with three additional side stories (gaiden) between 2003 and 2008, and that Zhu retired from online animation for family reasons.⁷

The count and dates do not fully agree. Baidu Baike notes two claims for the total, "8 works" and "12 episodes";¹ Douban lists 12 episodes of about 2 minutes each with a first broadcast of April 19, 2000,² IMDb lists a 12-episode mini series dated 2001–2002 with a release date of April 19, 2001,⁸ and one aggregated reference gives a Newgrounds release span of April 19, 2001 to February 23, 2002 with 10 episodes.⁹ The only individually documented upload date is Xiao Xiao No. 1 on Newgrounds, February 1, 2002, originally in AVI format before conversion to Flash.⁶

Identity and naming

The title 小小作品 means "a little bit of creative work," and the series is also listed as 小小系列, 小小火柴人, or simply Xiao Xiao.² Douban credits the work as directed and written by 朱志强, an animation short from mainland China with no dialogue.² The protagonist is an unnamed black stick figure with a large head and small limbs, and several entries do not carry the 小小作品 name at all, including 《小小特警》 (No. 4), 《小小电影》 (No. 7), and 《过关斩将》 (No. 9).² The alias 小小作品 in the series title is the collective name for these works rather than a separate title. The creator's given name is consistently given in Chinese sources as Zhiqiang (志强).

Creator and production

A self-taught outsider. Zhu Zhiqiang had no formal animation training; before making the series he worked in a printing plant and taught himself frame-by-frame animation out of personal interest.³ His archived self-description records that he created his first animation, 《独孤求败》, in 2000 using Painter, learned Flash at the end of 2000, and built the interactive 《过关斩将》, which won the best-game award at the 2000 WACOM Cup Flash contest; he completed 《小小No.3》 in mid-2001.⁴

The production method mixed drawing and programming. Zhu learned ActionScript, C, and C++ from zero and alone programmed the interactive entries, including the first-person shooter 《小小特警》; FlashEmpire's founder Gao Dayong described him as "a legend."³ The animation style drew on Hong Kong action cinema: extremely simplified stick figures performing kung fu reminiscent of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, with Matrix-like slow-motion effects, realistic blood, and weapons including sticks, knives, and small guns.⁷

Reception and virality

FlashEmpire wrote that in 2001 the Xiao Xiao series set off an unprecedented wave of Flash production across the Chinese internet, establishing Zhu as a top Chinese Flash animator.⁵ In September 2001 CCTV brought famous Flash animators of the day, including 小小, onto a program, drawing wide attention, and the series helped diversify domestic Flash production beyond music-video-style shorts.² In 2001 the magazine 新周刊 named Zhu an annual network figure, and on August 31, 2001 《小小特警No.4》 won a crystal award at China's first Pentium 4 Flash animation festival.¹

Distribution ran through two channels: the influential Chinese Flash site 闪客帝国 (FlashEmpire) and the American Flash game and animation site Newgrounds, which became the main platforms for the series.³ Newgrounds' series page credits the creator simply as "Zhu, a mysterious man from the east who has blessed us with some of the best stick-figure games and movies on the planet."¹⁰ In a November 5, 2001 FlashEmpire chat, Zhu said he had paused new releases pending the outcome of a lawsuit, and advised fans to register copyright on their own work.⁵

By the numbers

1 minute 15 seconds: the length of the fight sequence in the 2002 short that showed two stick figures in Hong Kong action-film-style choreography and caused an online sensation.³
About 7 months: the intermittent daily effort Zhu reported for his favorite work, 小小三号 (No. 3).⁵
3,194,412 views, 1,542 votes, 4.55/5.00: Newgrounds figures for Xiao Xiao No. 1, the only episode with documented audience counts.⁶
300,000 yuan: the first-instance damages award in the Nike case, later reversed.¹
264 million: YouTube views accumulated by end of January 2018 by Alan Becker's Animator vs. Animation works, which the Chinese critical press traces to Xiao Xiao's influence.³

Influence and legacy

The specialist animation newsletter Animation Obsessive dates the pioneering series to 2000–2002 and calls it a landmark for Flash animation that was "simple, utterly of its time and copied to infinity," and a story about the rise of the modern indie animator both in China and worldwide.¹¹ Baidu Baike notes the series is cited as the leading example of stick-figure computer animation and directly inspired a generation of later stick-figure animators.¹

The clearest documented line of descent runs to the American animator Alan Becker, whose Animator vs. Animation series shows several characters living in an empty house that homages the fight scene of Xiao Xiao No. 3.³

Copyright dispute

The documented legal dispute was with Nike, not with any other company. Zhu applied to register the stick-figure image as a trademark on June 23, 2003; after Nike's October 2003 "黑棍小人" advertisement he sued in December 2003. On December 29, 2004 the Beijing First Intermediate Court ruled that Nike had infringed and awarded Zhu 300,000 yuan, but on June 15, 2006 the Beijing High Court reversed, finding no infringement and dismissing Zhu's claim.¹ One aggregated English-language source gives the first-instance award as $36,000 and reports the judge finding the Nike stickman design different from Zhu's.⁹

After Flash

Zhu left the Flash field after 2003. Working with Gao Dayong at VML, he developed the iOS tower-defense game 《三国群殴传》, released around late 2009; he later moved to Shanghai and worked at a game company, and around 2016 said he was opening a "小小工作室" game studio.¹

The series' original platform technology ended before the series did. Adobe Flash reached end-of-life in December 2020, and Newgrounds notes that many browsers disabled or hid the plugin in preparation, offering the Newgrounds Player for legacy Flash content such as the Xiao Xiao submissions.⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Korean and East Asian web series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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