When stick figures fought(animationobsessive.substack.com)
animationobsessive.substack.com
When stick figures fought
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/when-stick-figures-fought
147 comments
Way back, before the year 2000, I desperately wanted to make my own stick figure death animations, but I was too lazy, and being in South Africa, we couldn't get any useful software.
I did however manage to get Delphi Personal Edition off a cover CD from a magazine grey-imported from up-north.
I proceeded to create "TISFAT" (This is Stick Figure Animation Theatre) in Delphi, inventing my own "inverse kinematics" algorithm, quotation marks not only because I had no idea what that was at the time, but I also had no way to look it up, and it was ghastly (the day I found out what atan2 did unlocked everything!).
Being a cocky teenager, I thought, "this is great!" and sent it to the local version of "PC Format" magazine and got it on the local coverdisc.
That's when I first learnt several very important things about having users! Always -always- version your file formats!
Anyway, it somehow made its way onto "the world wide web", and someone set up a forum about it, and a small community built around my bug-ridden app. Then the religious wars of "Pivot vs. TISFAT" started, so I reached out to the author of Pivot just to say I wasn't any part of it, and I'd be keen to add support for the Pivot file format.
Later on I learnt about verlet particle physics, made better "IK", made a Pascal wrapper for the Chipmunk physics library, allowing me to add physically-driven animation creation.
I look back with awe at younger me, because I wouldn't have the energy to power on like I did, and I'd think more-than-twice about showing anyone my work nowadays (I have the physical Winamp part 2 video basically done, but the fear of showing it in public is holding me back).
You can still find videos created with TISFAT on YouTube, and I've still got a complete rewrite sitting on a HDD somewhere, where I planned a "no UI" way of animating, targeting all the "new" multi-touchscreens back then...
Ah, good times.
I did however manage to get Delphi Personal Edition off a cover CD from a magazine grey-imported from up-north.
I proceeded to create "TISFAT" (This is Stick Figure Animation Theatre) in Delphi, inventing my own "inverse kinematics" algorithm, quotation marks not only because I had no idea what that was at the time, but I also had no way to look it up, and it was ghastly (the day I found out what atan2 did unlocked everything!).
Being a cocky teenager, I thought, "this is great!" and sent it to the local version of "PC Format" magazine and got it on the local coverdisc.
That's when I first learnt several very important things about having users! Always -always- version your file formats!
Anyway, it somehow made its way onto "the world wide web", and someone set up a forum about it, and a small community built around my bug-ridden app. Then the religious wars of "Pivot vs. TISFAT" started, so I reached out to the author of Pivot just to say I wasn't any part of it, and I'd be keen to add support for the Pivot file format.
Later on I learnt about verlet particle physics, made better "IK", made a Pascal wrapper for the Chipmunk physics library, allowing me to add physically-driven animation creation.
I look back with awe at younger me, because I wouldn't have the energy to power on like I did, and I'd think more-than-twice about showing anyone my work nowadays (I have the physical Winamp part 2 video basically done, but the fear of showing it in public is holding me back).
You can still find videos created with TISFAT on YouTube, and I've still got a complete rewrite sitting on a HDD somewhere, where I planned a "no UI" way of animating, targeting all the "new" multi-touchscreens back then...
Ah, good times.
Cmon show us the video :)
I owe my technology career to Flash.
Still find it incredibly sad that Adobe and Steve Jobs were able to destroy it together.
This tool was able to draw in creative, previously non-technical people and provide a gradual ramp of complexity that we could navigate.
Nothing has come close since.
Still find it incredibly sad that Adobe and Steve Jobs were able to destroy it together.
This tool was able to draw in creative, previously non-technical people and provide a gradual ramp of complexity that we could navigate.
Nothing has come close since.
The product itself still exists as Adobe Animate, I think (or one of the Adobe CC tools). It's just as good or better than it ever was, with the same workflow. But instead of exporting to SWF now people just export to video and share it on video platforms. Lots of great stuff still being done with it on Youtube.
But flash was interactive, videos are not. I miss the days kongregate had a bunch of new fun games regularly.
I suppose itch.io fills that niche now.
I suppose itch.io fills that niche now.
Exporting to video does solve some portion of the use cases (i.e., early South Park), but the power of interactivity is what captivated me.
Flash was a poorly written piece of software. It had numerous bad memory leaks and a CPU hog. It was never allowed on the iPhone probably because it would have drained the batteries really quickly. On top of that HTML5 was starting to catch on and could eventually do everything Flash could and do it better without the memory leaks and poor CPU usage. I have the very unfortunate claim to the title of being an engineer on the world's biggest Flash/Flex app. The memory leaks were so bad that Adobe advised us to just restart the app periodically -- despite Adobe marketing Flex as enterprise ready. We found compiler bugs for Adobe. Adobe and Jobs didn't set out to destroy it. Macromedia wrote bad code that performed poorly and it wasn't worth the effort for Adobe fix it once HTML5 won.
None of that matters for the kind of creative work the grand parent likely had in mind.
Perhaps there was a memory leak in Unidentified Flying Assholes or the endless line of punch-a-celeb games or the thousands of stick fight productions and so on, but no one cared and enjoyed them immensely anyway. You could do something cool without ever learning about things like memory leaks or vulnerabilities in the underlying platform.
Perhaps there was a memory leak in Unidentified Flying Assholes or the endless line of punch-a-celeb games or the thousands of stick fight productions and so on, but no one cared and enjoyed them immensely anyway. You could do something cool without ever learning about things like memory leaks or vulnerabilities in the underlying platform.
> None of that matters for the kind of creative work the grand parent likely had in mind.
Some of that did, at least for how that creative work was almost exclusively delivered to the world. Those bugs were not just excessive resource usage and instability, they were incredibly often exploitable security flaws that were regularly weaponized against a huge swath of internet users. The ubiquity of the Flash browser plugin was simultaneously one of the greatest strengths of Flash as a creative platform and one of the greatest risks to the average person browsing the web in the 2000s.
The plugin needed to die. Unfortunately the Flash community was so firmly built around the web plugin as their distribution method of choice (presumably because many of us were browsing animations and playing games at work/school where we couldn't necessarily download and run arbitrary .exes) that the plugin was more or less a diseased conjoined twin, and when it died the community didn't have long left.
Compare this to Java where the death of the browser plugin caused a number of badly designed banking sites to have to be redesigned in a less stupid (but quite often still very stupid) way but the community as a whole continued on without huge disruption. The browser plugin was just one of many places Java existed, it wasn't the dominant focus of the community.
Some of that did, at least for how that creative work was almost exclusively delivered to the world. Those bugs were not just excessive resource usage and instability, they were incredibly often exploitable security flaws that were regularly weaponized against a huge swath of internet users. The ubiquity of the Flash browser plugin was simultaneously one of the greatest strengths of Flash as a creative platform and one of the greatest risks to the average person browsing the web in the 2000s.
The plugin needed to die. Unfortunately the Flash community was so firmly built around the web plugin as their distribution method of choice (presumably because many of us were browsing animations and playing games at work/school where we couldn't necessarily download and run arbitrary .exes) that the plugin was more or less a diseased conjoined twin, and when it died the community didn't have long left.
Compare this to Java where the death of the browser plugin caused a number of badly designed banking sites to have to be redesigned in a less stupid (but quite often still very stupid) way but the community as a whole continued on without huge disruption. The browser plugin was just one of many places Java existed, it wasn't the dominant focus of the community.
Yeah, it's kinda crazy people are brushing over the security issues. The nostalgia is huge, I get it, but Flash was terrible for browsing the internet at the time.
Can you name some renowned such creative works that were "weaponized against a huge swath of internet users"?
I think they’re referring to the flash plugin itself. It enabled a vast amount of creative work and it enabled vast exploitation of users’ browsers. I worked as a tech at a consumer-focused computer store from about 1999-2005. It was a wild wild world back then. The vast majority of our time was spent removing viruses, browser toolbars, Bonzi Buddy and friends, and helping people understand how their online banking passwords got stolen by the shady porn site they like so much.
[deleted]
The core ideas of Flash remain unparalleled even now.
- Vector drawing and rendering for extremely fast performance and file size
- Visual authoring tool that invited creative, non-technical people to the party
- Deep support for managing state changes over time
- Gradual ramp of complexity that balanced ease of entry without overly constraining expertise
Were most Flash apps slow and buggy? Yes
Did Flex have tons of bloat and memory leaks? Yes
Did Flash create a cambrian explosion of creative and fun projects that inspired a generation of young people? Yes
- Vector drawing and rendering for extremely fast performance and file size
- Visual authoring tool that invited creative, non-technical people to the party
- Deep support for managing state changes over time
- Gradual ramp of complexity that balanced ease of entry without overly constraining expertise
Were most Flash apps slow and buggy? Yes
Did Flex have tons of bloat and memory leaks? Yes
Did Flash create a cambrian explosion of creative and fun projects that inspired a generation of young people? Yes
It was not a CPU hog - this is a myth that needs to die The flash runtime was pretty modest.
Now, the code people wrote was CPU hogs, because lots of non coders were writing code and they would do anything to make it work. The Flash runtime was not causing the Punch the Monkey and to peg your CPU, it was because the punch the monkey ad was fucking awful code.
All those Flash programmer went on to write the first wave of HTML5 stuff which, shock horror, where vastly CPU inefficient.
Now, the code people wrote was CPU hogs, because lots of non coders were writing code and they would do anything to make it work. The Flash runtime was not causing the Punch the Monkey and to peg your CPU, it was because the punch the monkey ad was fucking awful code.
All those Flash programmer went on to write the first wave of HTML5 stuff which, shock horror, where vastly CPU inefficient.
Same here, I somehow acquired a pirated copy of Flash when I was 10 or 11. Went through the included offline manual and within a few days somehow knew I'll probably end up doing this programming thing for the rest of my life :D
It's sad what happened to Flash, sure we have plugin free interactive content using JS but I'm not sure if anything has replicated the IDE. Though I guess the decline can also be attributed to the users moving onto other platforms. The kids making games moved on to making Android/iOS games and the animators moved to Youtube.
It's sad what happened to Flash, sure we have plugin free interactive content using JS but I'm not sure if anything has replicated the IDE. Though I guess the decline can also be attributed to the users moving onto other platforms. The kids making games moved on to making Android/iOS games and the animators moved to Youtube.
I remember the white MacBook Core 2 Duo with 100% CPU, fans maxed out while watching YouTube 720p.
This was months before the iPhone announcement.
I can see why they killed it.
This was months before the iPhone announcement.
I can see why they killed it.
Because it was a security nightmare
No it was a usability nightmare. Watching Flash Youtube on Android technically worked but it was a horrible experience.
Google were ok with "works but janky af", but Apple weren't.
Google were ok with "works but janky af", but Apple weren't.
We could have kept that creative environment (that seem to just disappear without any alternative to this day) while leaving videos to evolve as they did.
People here complain like they have issues with long term memory, but reality was - there was no real web video before. That apple had more issues than others was problem that should have been contained to apple walled garden alone. World was, is and will be much larger than that.
People here complain like they have issues with long term memory, but reality was - there was no real web video before. That apple had more issues than others was problem that should have been contained to apple walled garden alone. World was, is and will be much larger than that.
That 'creative environment' was mostly used for obnoxious advertising by the time flash died.
The creative environment could have been built with HTML/JS as well. I feel what killed it more so was mobile gaming took over casual games, and modern game engines enabled a single person who would have been making dinky little flash games to now make what used to take an entire studio.
Maybe, but playing videos was 99% of the use case for Flash by the time it was killed by Apple. Adobe could have kept maintaining it for the 1% Flash games, ads and terrible websites, but you can see why they gave up...
It can be both but it definitely had a security problem
> Mitre lists more than 1,000 Adobe Flash vulnerabilities.
>Flash ranks 14th on the list of products ranked by the number of vulnerabilities – one of only two applications in the top 25 that aren’t operating systems or browsers.
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security-and-risk-manage...
> Mitre lists more than 1,000 Adobe Flash vulnerabilities.
>Flash ranks 14th on the list of products ranked by the number of vulnerabilities – one of only two applications in the top 25 that aren’t operating systems or browsers.
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security-and-risk-manage...
The vast majority of games I played, for years, were flash games. I have a lot of fond memories of that time.
However, Flash sucked. It ran terribly, it was insecure, and a mess to maintain. It needed to go.
However, Flash sucked. It ran terribly, it was insecure, and a mess to maintain. It needed to go.
The problem with flash is that it was a security, performance and usability nightmare for web browsers.
Yes the games and videos were cool, but 99% of the usage of Flash was awful ads and UI/UX elements.
Yes the games and videos were cool, but 99% of the usage of Flash was awful ads and UI/UX elements.
I just used an click to load flash extension in firefox back then and everything was fine.
True.
That’s basically how h.264 and DRM is being done in the browser for stuff like Netflix, today, right?
That’s basically how h.264 and DRM is being done in the browser for stuff like Netflix, today, right?
For most of Flash's existence on the web, I had my computers configured to block flash. (The block was achieved by removing files IIRC).
Unity.
I used to make animations with https://pivotanimator.net/ a lot as a kid, trying to make fight scenes like these. A sort of related thing is ToriBash, which is kind of a multiplayer 3D animation game where you fight each other by making decisions on which muscles to contract at each time interval.
Loved this stuff so much. I miss my summers off from school, where I would never think of a day gone as time "spent".
Loved this stuff so much. I miss my summers off from school, where I would never think of a day gone as time "spent".
if you liked toribash, also check out Your Only Move Is Hustle (or YOMI hustle) which is similarly 'turn based' but in 2d. Closest thing I've found to playable Xiao Xiao.
You might also like 'Stick It To The Stickman' and 'One Finger Death Punch' 1 & 2.
>A sort of related thing is ToriBash ...
If memory serves, the sound effects were a fantastic touch on top of the multiplayer hilarity of that game.
Looks like there's still an active community around it today, based on a cursory YouTube search.
If memory serves, the sound effects were a fantastic touch on top of the multiplayer hilarity of that game.
Looks like there's still an active community around it today, based on a cursory YouTube search.
Toribash is awesome! I last checked it a year ago but it was still alive then [1]. Worth checking out still. People who were great at it back in the day were legitimately doing dark arts with the tools the game came with. I wonder if we'll have an era of appreciation and rediscovery for pre-AI software.
[1] - https://www.toribash.com/
[1] - https://www.toribash.com/
Yep, had Pivot on a disk. Countless hours lost making my own sprites, and I remember the joy of downloading other peoples sprites that were actually good
I remember spending hours and hours on pivot and forums like droidz.org which used to host animations, models, and forums. I even remember learning about "easing" and different "levels" of animation and collabs as showcased on darkdemon.org[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqDoAYKG4A
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqDoAYKG4A
I was just about to make the same comment! I never remembered the name of this software. Thank you so much for posting it!
I still have a bunch of .piv files on a CD backup I burned on my PC right before I switched to an iMac G5 in the summer of 2007. I should fire Pivot again and reminisce. If I recall correctly, they were absolutely crude and incredibly poorly done.
This unlocked some good memories that have been sitting latent for probably 15 years or so.
[deleted]
Oooh, I really liked ToriBash! I didn't play for very long for whatever reason, but I did think it was a creative and fun game.
This unlocked memories I forgot I had. Not only playing these games, but Flash introduced me to gamedev. I can clearly remember struggling in Actionscript, trying to get collision detection and resolution working. I never got it to work properly lol.
By the way, if anyone wants to relive some old flash games/movies, there is https://ruffle.rs/, an open source Flash implementation. It's great!
By the way, if anyone wants to relive some old flash games/movies, there is https://ruffle.rs/, an open source Flash implementation. It's great!
Man the Flash era, and the overall vibe of creativity on the internet back then (hey it was only 20 years ago), was the kind where you could feel a limitless potential for the future, where everyone would be awesome.
Then it all congealed into the tentacles of 4-5 corporations and now we're forever stuck in their "How do you do fellow kids" cringefest..
AI also ha[s/d] potential, but it's already getting crippled at birth by corporate idiocy and lawsuit fever.
Then it all congealed into the tentacles of 4-5 corporations and now we're forever stuck in their "How do you do fellow kids" cringefest..
AI also ha[s/d] potential, but it's already getting crippled at birth by corporate idiocy and lawsuit fever.
Honestly happy memories of Actionscript 3 are a big factor in how easily I cozied up to TypeScript.
Absolutely, me too!! AS3 was a beautiful language.
Ah, XiaoXiao. Under the amazingly named `E:\Storage\Old\Fun\old\XiaoXiao` I have
fight (xiaoxiao1).avi, XiaoXiao_City_Plaza.swf, and xiaoxiao2.swf - xiaoxiao9.swf
I'm jealous. My files from those days did not survive; too many hard drive failures and lost or destroyed CDs.
This is particularly sad to me because I dabbled in Flash animation too back then, since I was in art school at the time. None of my creations survived. Some were even acceptable work.
This is particularly sad to me because I dabbled in Flash animation too back then, since I was in art school at the time. None of my creations survived. Some were even acceptable work.
Archive.org has a lot of the old flash stuff, including Xiao Xiao.
Sure, but the files I'm talking about were never online.
Ah, that sucks :( Stuff I "created" is still saved, but it’s mostly angsty teenager poems.
Send us a file listing for `fun' :)
That has a *lot* of random images I downloaded. From street art, over those "priceless" memes people used to make. All in
The videos directly there are a bunch of internet famous things, some of them in German:
Basshunter_Boten_Anna_German.avi, PatchMeUpMusicVideoByRootKit-GeekVideo.avi, trafo-entkopplung.avi, wow_forporn.avi, fainting goats.flv, gangbang.flv, Gruftis1989.flv, hape kerkeling.flv, HumanCamera.flv, Wii.vs.PS3.flv, der_stack.m4v, hacker_packen_aus.m4v, 3dshot.mov, ACUVUE_Hearts_on_Fire.mov, AtheistenOnly - JesusVideo.mov, fsm-spotting.mpg, Stroh.flv.MPG, tetris.mpg, test.swf, theresheis.swf, blowdarts.wmv, einsteinthebird.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-30292-Mafia.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-50776-korn_mosh.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-51227-pop.wmv, getalife.wmv, hamburgertrick.wmv, insane.wmv, mariopiano.wmv, nintendochoir.wmv, SOAD_gremlins.wmv, supersoakerflamethrower.wmv, theglasstrick.wmv, TRANIX.NET-11-String-Bass.wmv
"gangbang.flv" is some French movie student project "Revenge of the Gangbang Zombies", not actual porn ;)
The Fun\old folder has these:
Folders: CS ft. Southpark, Dela&Ort, HTF, Knight Rider, Lenore, XiaoXiao
Files: AYB.swf, AYS.swf, beer.swf, c_d_mmorpg.swf, cow.swf, crab.swf, cruise.swf, dengdeng.swf, fuckher.swf, hhonda-ad-300k.swf, humor_pong.swf, knowjackschitt.swf, metaluohigh.swf, optical.exe, rgb.swf, starwarz.swf, trafikskolen.swf, urbanlegends.swf, winrg.swf
The videos directly there are a bunch of internet famous things, some of them in German:
Basshunter_Boten_Anna_German.avi, PatchMeUpMusicVideoByRootKit-GeekVideo.avi, trafo-entkopplung.avi, wow_forporn.avi, fainting goats.flv, gangbang.flv, Gruftis1989.flv, hape kerkeling.flv, HumanCamera.flv, Wii.vs.PS3.flv, der_stack.m4v, hacker_packen_aus.m4v, 3dshot.mov, ACUVUE_Hearts_on_Fire.mov, AtheistenOnly - JesusVideo.mov, fsm-spotting.mpg, Stroh.flv.MPG, tetris.mpg, test.swf, theresheis.swf, blowdarts.wmv, einsteinthebird.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-30292-Mafia.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-50776-korn_mosh.wmv, FLURL-dot-com-51227-pop.wmv, getalife.wmv, hamburgertrick.wmv, insane.wmv, mariopiano.wmv, nintendochoir.wmv, SOAD_gremlins.wmv, supersoakerflamethrower.wmv, theglasstrick.wmv, TRANIX.NET-11-String-Bass.wmv
"gangbang.flv" is some French movie student project "Revenge of the Gangbang Zombies", not actual porn ;)
The Fun\old folder has these:
Folders: CS ft. Southpark, Dela&Ort, HTF, Knight Rider, Lenore, XiaoXiao
Files: AYB.swf, AYS.swf, beer.swf, c_d_mmorpg.swf, cow.swf, crab.swf, cruise.swf, dengdeng.swf, fuckher.swf, hhonda-ad-300k.swf, humor_pong.swf, knowjackschitt.swf, metaluohigh.swf, optical.exe, rgb.swf, starwarz.swf, trafikskolen.swf, urbanlegends.swf, winrg.swf
Is the first one the "Anna is a bot" song?
I had actually built a bot named Anna to trick friends on IRC (with AIML) so when I came upon the song it felt hilarious.
I had actually built a bot named Anna to trick friends on IRC (with AIML) so when I came upon the song it felt hilarious.
It wasn't until the mention of "City_Plaza.swf" that memories finally came flooding back.
I assumed this was going to be about Stick Death but I was mistaken! I had never heard of XiaoXiao before this article...
Stick Death was online when I first starting used the WWW, I was obsessed with it! It was just incredibly to me that someone could easily make these animations and get them online for everyone to see! I believe this around the same time as 2advanced and the "Flash intro" craze...
Stick Death was online when I first starting used the WWW, I was obsessed with it! It was just incredibly to me that someone could easily make these animations and get them online for everyone to see! I believe this around the same time as 2advanced and the "Flash intro" craze...
I immediately thought of Animator vs Animation!
I remembered Alan Becker (https://youtube.com/@alanbecker) who creates stories with an array of his stick figure characters.
Sometimes, they interact with real world too!
Sometimes, they interact with real world too!
Yes when I saw stick figures mentioned on HN I immediately thought of his "Animator vs Animation" [1] (to which I've just rediscovered the title!)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npTC6b5-yvM
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npTC6b5-yvM
Yeah, I discovered the channel through this series as well.
"Animation vs Physics"[1] was video which got started me with the channel. The presentation is beautiful there!
[1]: https://youtu.be/ErMSHiQRnc8
"Animation vs Physics"[1] was video which got started me with the channel. The presentation is beautiful there!
[1]: https://youtu.be/ErMSHiQRnc8
I was knee-deep in the flash animation scene through the late 90s early 00s, and I don't remember anyone calling anyone 'Flashers'. China-only I suppose.
I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
There was a group on deviantArt called flashers. I wasn’t a member myself, but some of their members made some neat stuff I remember.
The group hasn’t been active for many years now it looks like, but the group page still exists.
https://www.deviantart.com/flashers
Group founded 2004.
There’s not much in the group gallery now, so probably I was looking in the individual galleries of some of the members and I think some of the time some member would make something and post it to Albino Blacksheep and sites like that and maybe post a journal entry about it to their own individual journal on their own profile.
deviantArt also had IRC-like group chats. Flashers had a chat room. There’s a link to it still in the about section of the group, but that link doesn’t work any more. Even if a group didn’t have much posted into its gallery they could have a lot of member activity in those chat rooms. And from what I remember, I think I visited the flashers chat room a few times and that it was pretty active.
I think some chat rooms were private, and some were open even to people who were not in any particular group.
The group hasn’t been active for many years now it looks like, but the group page still exists.
https://www.deviantart.com/flashers
Group founded 2004.
There’s not much in the group gallery now, so probably I was looking in the individual galleries of some of the members and I think some of the time some member would make something and post it to Albino Blacksheep and sites like that and maybe post a journal entry about it to their own individual journal on their own profile.
deviantArt also had IRC-like group chats. Flashers had a chat room. There’s a link to it still in the about section of the group, but that link doesn’t work any more. Even if a group didn’t have much posted into its gallery they could have a lot of member activity in those chat rooms. And from what I remember, I think I visited the flashers chat room a few times and that it was pretty active.
I think some chat rooms were private, and some were open even to people who were not in any particular group.
Yeah, I miss DeviantArt.
Yeh stick death definitely was before Xiao Xiao. I remember all the lads at school sat around a computer in school binge watching them all.
>I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
Definitely remember Stick Death in highschool around '99-'01, 2+ years before this flashers group supposedly started.
Definitely remember Stick Death in highschool around '99-'01, 2+ years before this flashers group supposedly started.
Is there anywhere you can watch these old flash creations like Xiao Xiao and Homestar Runner with the original vector graphics? The reproductions I’ve seen on YouTube are terrible, in part because of the obvious video artifacts that don’t preserve the edges, but also because it loses all interactivity.
If you can grab a copy of the SWF somewhere, Ruffle[0] is a decent Flash replacement and compatibility is pretty good[1].
[0]: https://ruffle.rs/
[1]: https://ruffle.rs/compatibility
[0]: https://ruffle.rs/
[1]: https://ruffle.rs/compatibility
The versions linked to in the article use the original vector graphics. In fact I think they're the original post location (NewGrounds). From there you can follow the link to the author's page, which has them all:
https://zhu.newgrounds.com/
https://zhu.newgrounds.com/
H*R is up again.
https://homestarrunner.com/main
Using Ruffle. Like the others, it's somewhat recent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestar_Runner#cite_ref-18
https://homestarrunner.com/main
Using Ruffle. Like the others, it's somewhat recent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestar_Runner#cite_ref-18
Stick figures live on! Hyun's Dojo is the new place where stick animations are.
Recently the winners of a stick figure tournament have been announced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO5hiRV5MTk
There is even a timeline if you want to know the full history; https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index....
There is even a timeline if you want to know the full history; https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index....
SFDT was the first online community I was a part of. It was a special time on the early internet. I feel so lucky to have been a very small part of it.
Can't believe this is the only mention of sfdt so far on this thread. I have similar nostalgia about it being the first online community I joined. Collaborating with others, getting a glimpse into their personal lives, chatting off-platform on MSN/AIM. I wonder if that experience exists for kids in the modern day internet...
You can intentionally seek out such places today, but the average internet denizen sticks to a few known mass communities. If someone is lucky, they get involved in a small subreddit or group chat.
Group chats are the closest thing we have to that experience today, but they're probably more socially-oriented on average, unlike the groups I rolled with back in the aughts which were all heavily creative- and fandom-oriented.
Group chats are the closest thing we have to that experience today, but they're probably more socially-oriented on average, unlike the groups I rolled with back in the aughts which were all heavily creative- and fandom-oriented.
> Zhu initially won in court. Then the appeals process ran until 2006, when he finally lost. The stick figures were too different, according to the judges, and the imagery was too simple to copyright. Nike was in the clear.
I am sure if I add an extra couple of pixels to the end of the Nike Swoosh, I can use it for my own branding everywhere, because it is not the same and a rounded tick is just too simple to copyright in any case ... /sarcasm
I could even cite the original ruling against Zhu as a precedent for extra kharma points.
I am sure if I add an extra couple of pixels to the end of the Nike Swoosh, I can use it for my own branding everywhere, because it is not the same and a rounded tick is just too simple to copyright in any case ... /sarcasm
I could even cite the original ruling against Zhu as a precedent for extra kharma points.
It's not about right or wrong, it's about how many lawyers you can afford. If you can afford lots of lawyers, you can run out the clock, drain your opponents budgets, craft laws and lobby for their passage, and all sorts of creative ways of getting around doing the right thing.
A random creator in China in the early oughts wouldn't have a chance in hell against Nike or any other big corporations, trademark and copyright isn't and wasn't set up for foreign citizens to leverage IP against domestic entities. Without starting with a big legal team and a US corporation and having all the reams of paperwork and registrations and forms in triplicate, he just wasn't playing the same game. He should have been reimbursed or gotten a royalty, from a moral standpoint, but he didn't have any valid legal standing.
A court tried to be generous in the interpretation of the law in order to grant him his first victory, and that would probably have been a good precedent, but the law isn't really designed to be flexible like that - it's very rare that "the right thing" ends up congruent with how the law works in practice.
A random creator in China in the early oughts wouldn't have a chance in hell against Nike or any other big corporations, trademark and copyright isn't and wasn't set up for foreign citizens to leverage IP against domestic entities. Without starting with a big legal team and a US corporation and having all the reams of paperwork and registrations and forms in triplicate, he just wasn't playing the same game. He should have been reimbursed or gotten a royalty, from a moral standpoint, but he didn't have any valid legal standing.
A court tried to be generous in the interpretation of the law in order to grant him his first victory, and that would probably have been a good precedent, but the law isn't really designed to be flexible like that - it's very rare that "the right thing" ends up congruent with how the law works in practice.
I’m not clear what the case against Nike was. Zhu did not create stick men. He wasn’t even the first to publish “stick fight” videos. He filed a trademark of some sort but you can’t take ownership over an entire class of art based on a trademark. Disney can stop me from using Mickey Mouse in my ads. They can’t stop me from animating a mouse.
Nike come out of the whole thing pretty badly. Why didn't they just pay him a few thousand dollars to do the work?
> It was the era when a major company could brush off the bad PR that comes with copying a major online artist. Is it believable that no one involved in the Nike ads had seen Xiao Xiao? Not really — it was popular with young people worldwide. Yet Zhu was new media at a time when old media ruled. What could he do?
This doesn't make any sense. From earlier in the same article:
> Zhu didn’t invent violent stickman animations. In the ‘90s, the Western site Stick Figure Death Theatre hosted exactly what its name implied. But Xiao Xiao, and its mix of Jackie Chan with Jet Li with The Matrix, perfected the idea.
> Either way, it was Xiao Xiao that made “stick fights” massive online. Clones were rampant — even Stick Figure Death Theatre had them. As one paper reported in 2002:
>> The Web’s legions of part-time Flash animators have begun producing their own copies of Xiao Xiao — so many, in fact, that there’s a whole portal dedicated to them. Stick Figure Death Theatre ... has so many stick man knockoffs, you have to wonder why Zhu doesn’t just give up.
If we assume that people at Nike were familiar with Xiao Xiao... and that they were also familiar with the mountains of similar material, what are we saying they did wrong?
This doesn't make any sense. From earlier in the same article:
> Zhu didn’t invent violent stickman animations. In the ‘90s, the Western site Stick Figure Death Theatre hosted exactly what its name implied. But Xiao Xiao, and its mix of Jackie Chan with Jet Li with The Matrix, perfected the idea.
> Either way, it was Xiao Xiao that made “stick fights” massive online. Clones were rampant — even Stick Figure Death Theatre had them. As one paper reported in 2002:
>> The Web’s legions of part-time Flash animators have begun producing their own copies of Xiao Xiao — so many, in fact, that there’s a whole portal dedicated to them. Stick Figure Death Theatre ... has so many stick man knockoffs, you have to wonder why Zhu doesn’t just give up.
If we assume that people at Nike were familiar with Xiao Xiao... and that they were also familiar with the mountains of similar material, what are we saying they did wrong?
These animations got me into Flash and soon after into programming thanks to ActionScript, one copycat music video that maybe made even stronger impression in teenage me was a sad adult-themed music video from 2004, I just found ii after looking online for a bit: I love death - Lodger (Finnish band) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BoFQV4jXun4
Same, I had been making stickman animations in powerpoint of all things, before a friend mentioned I should try FlashMX.
I even made this terrible thing as my first foray into AS2:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408469
I even made this terrible thing as my first foray into AS2:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408469
I made a few Flash animations and a couple made it to and MTV show here in Latin America called "Flash MTV" that featured some of the animations people sent them, unfortunately I no longer have a copy of any of them and they don't seem to be online, although you can find some made by other people on YouTube.
My initial career idea was to become an animator but I found forums of senior animators complaining about low wages and long hours and it made me second guess myself about all that and I slowly picked up programming instead, I did get a copy of a great book called "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams, best known for directing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", the book still lives in my library and I hold it in great steem.
My initial career idea was to become an animator but I found forums of senior animators complaining about low wages and long hours and it made me second guess myself about all that and I slowly picked up programming instead, I did get a copy of a great book called "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams, best known for directing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", the book still lives in my library and I hold it in great steem.
I remember that video well
I think it made teenage me empathize a bit more with my parents, about how bleak can existence feel.
Macromedia Flash had probably the best UX of all the programs ever created. It all goes downhill from there.
I feel that way about a lot of things. Maybe it's just nostalgia...but heck we had Flash, Frontpage, VB,...we were spoiled.
I sometimes wonder why such concepts went away, and everything became far more complicated.
I sometimes wonder why such concepts went away, and everything became far more complicated.
Some tools were certainly better, like Flash. Mobile made a lot of things complicated. Half the game dev tools still don't run properly for mobile. HTML5 was supposed to make things easier, and for a while it did, but it got rapidly more complicated afterwards.
Some things are much better today, like Procreate.
Some things are much better today, like Procreate.
I dont think HTML5 was supposed to make things easier. It is just that major players wanted to get rid of flash for own reason (some of them valid) and HTML5 was something they were able to point at. It was never easier or even half replacement, it was significantly more complicated and crappier experience for an average normal creator.
It never even got some convincing demo. All those I have seen at the time were the "spend a lot more time to produce something much less impressive" kind of anti demos.
It never even got some convincing demo. All those I have seen at the time were the "spend a lot more time to produce something much less impressive" kind of anti demos.
There still aren't any convincing demos.
Is there any reason why they couldn’t be emulated with WASM+canvas?
No, and a lot of Flash projects have already been converted; notably, Google was one of the first to release a flash-to-html5 converter, because a lot of ads were Flash at the time.
But Adobe's missed opportunity was keeping Flash alive, "just" adding a html5 / canvas / JS version instead of the browser plug-ins that were killed when smartphones/tablets refused to support them.
But Adobe's missed opportunity was keeping Flash alive, "just" adding a html5 / canvas / JS version instead of the browser plug-ins that were killed when smartphones/tablets refused to support them.
It's the flash animation/design tools that are missing from modern young people, not the ability to render it into the browser.
Ah man, these are some awesome memories! Hot damn I liked these when I was a kid! I was first introduced to them on a LAN party. We would pass these kinds of things to eachother between CS 1.5 matches (VLC can play any file format!)
I remember towards the end of my lan party going days, these sick fights were finally outdone by the much more advanced Killer Bean.
Just a bean, trying to get some sleep.
Those were the days
I remember towards the end of my lan party going days, these sick fights were finally outdone by the much more advanced Killer Bean.
Just a bean, trying to get some sleep.
Those were the days
Killer Bean! That's exactly where my mind went as well.
I'm so happy people still remember it. We used to watch 2.1 at every LAN, too.
I'm so happy people still remember it. We used to watch 2.1 at every LAN, too.
Stick figures run through a lot of amateur digital animation, for probably obvious reasons. Pivot reigned on a lot of early YouTube and the stubby stick figure style ran through a lot of Flipnote Hatena. I'm not sure if it's simply that standards for amateur digital content have evolved, or if we have lost the character of small platforms like SFDT and Flipnote, but I do find stick figures absent today on the large platforms we've all herded towards. A lot of what I see is definitely buoyed by Flipnote diehards.
Wow, Flipnote on the DS brings back memories.
For the uninitiated, behold peak animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI-IbwOveII
For the uninitiated, behold peak animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI-IbwOveII
Fascinating. My friends and I were obsessed with stickpage.com in the early to mid 2000s, where Xiao Xiao and a bunch of imitators and derivatives were hosted.
I kind of miss that era of the internet where there were random, niche sites you would fall in love with and it wasn’t all just a post on YouTube or Facebook or Reddit or something.
I kind of miss that era of the internet where there were random, niche sites you would fall in love with and it wasn’t all just a post on YouTube or Facebook or Reddit or something.
Was not expecting to read about Xiao Xiao today! I loved Xiao Xiao as a preteen, and spent many hours playing Xiao Xiao 4 [1], or re-watching the other Xiao Xiaos over and over again.
[1] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/25718
[1] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/25718
Flash animation isn't dead, it's just called source filmmaker now. Whether 'skibidi toilet' is an upgrade from stick death is an argument that i'm sure lives on either side of the generation gap, but amateur internet filmmaking is unquestionably alive and well.
That's spooky, we were literally just talking about stickdeath in the office and then this shows up.
And most people weren’t talking about it, but it’s inevitable that some were, and I guess that’s you. Surely you’re not surprised about all the times when you’re not talking about something that then shows up on HN?
You talk about stuff everyday, and stuff shows up on HN everyday, eventually they’ll coincide.
You talk about stuff everyday, and stuff shows up on HN everyday, eventually they’ll coincide.
Oh my god do you think it was selection bias? No way, I’m certain it was spooky action at a distance! /s
The fallacy in question would be sharpshooter's fallacy. Selection bias is when a sample misrepresents the population.
I kinda feel like these are two different views on the same basic 'mismatch-between-sampling-and-distribution' fallacy, what am I missing here?
Since nobody mentioned it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2085540/Stick_It_to_the_S...
Woah, this brought back memories. Like that one flash game where you played a stickman hitman.
I was going to mention MTV's Liquid Television animation showcase as a potential inspiration for this.
That link seems partly confirmed since they mention an online predecessor called Stick Figure Death Theatre and the Liquid Television segment (which re-enacted famous movie scenes with stick figure animations) was called Stick Figure Theatre.
Pretty much each individual segment of that show was mind blowing (it launched Beavid and Butthead) but the stick figure interpretation of Night of he Living Dead stuck with me for years.
YouTube has a compilation: https://youtu.be/-M7-Sew5aU8
That link seems partly confirmed since they mention an online predecessor called Stick Figure Death Theatre and the Liquid Television segment (which re-enacted famous movie scenes with stick figure animations) was called Stick Figure Theatre.
Pretty much each individual segment of that show was mind blowing (it launched Beavid and Butthead) but the stick figure interpretation of Night of he Living Dead stuck with me for years.
YouTube has a compilation: https://youtu.be/-M7-Sew5aU8
Some of these stick figure fight videos inspired me to make copies which lead to me learning flash which lead to my first dev job working in flash. Cool to see this throwback.
Wow, blast from the past. There's a fairly recent game on Steam called "Stick it to the Stickman" which practically puts you in control of the character in these animations. In fact I think the game was directly inspired by them (There's a Devolver interview with someone working on the game mentioning it[1]).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2kGSAIljU
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2kGSAIljU
That's so cool. I watched all of his work, and was in the animation scene, and I didn't even realize at the time, the creator is Chinese! I learned how to use Flash, dabbled into scripts, learned to do very basic stuff on 3DSMax, as a ~10 year old little shit, and all of that most likely wouldn't have happened, if it wasn't for his work -- it's safe to say that my life was dramatically impacted by him. Thanks for sharing this, OP!
i was OBSSESSSED with this growing up. i had no idea about the origin or real name or that it was chinese origin. incredible. thanks to whoever found and submitted this
newgrounds.com in its heyday was so fun.
Also anyone else remember when websites used to make Flash intros that you'd have to skip to get to the content?
Also anyone else remember when websites used to make Flash intros that you'd have to skip to get to the content?
Immediately when reading the „When stick figures fought“ title, I suspected that this piece would be about Xiao Xiao.
It was such an impressive piece of art for younger me (12 years old then and just getting started with this „internet“ thing) that apparently it made some lasting memories. Made my day to revisit these videos after such a very very long time. Thanks!
It was such an impressive piece of art for younger me (12 years old then and just getting started with this „internet“ thing) that apparently it made some lasting memories. Made my day to revisit these videos after such a very very long time. Thanks!
I remember a “choose your own story” stick figure Flash app, called Time to Die (I believe), where the “protagonist” was a condemned convict, used as target practice by scientists.
You could pick weapons used by the scientists. In most, he’d just get blown away, but in one scenario, he grabs the gun, and kills everyone in the facility.
Not sure if it was this guy, or was just inspired by him.
You could pick weapons used by the scientists. In most, he’d just get blown away, but in one scenario, he grabs the gun, and kills everyone in the facility.
Not sure if it was this guy, or was just inspired by him.
I added ELIZA to shittalk for a statistical ML model to play bouts on 'stickfight' PVP game around 2000. :)
Two games I'd strongly recommend in this style are Your Only Move is HUSTLE (YOMI Hustle for sort), moddable multiplayer turn-based stick fights; and One Finger Death Punch, fast-paced brawler with a really simple control scheme.
Many people use the former purely to make animations.
Many people use the former purely to make animations.
Vaguely related is Haxe, https://haxe.org/. Originally a way to do ActionScript, now it targets a lot more and is quite nice to work in.
And OpenFL https://openfl.org/ which is an implementation of the Flash API written in Haxe. It can cross-compile to HTML5 or native C++ mobile and desktop. Disclosure: I'm a contributor.
Oh this is delightful! Such fond memories of the stick figure fighting craze, I even turned my first maths textbook of a few hundred pages into a flipbook stick figure fight, on both sides!
I grew up learning Flash and started my love for programming due to ActionScript 2 then 3, is there anything like this today I am looking for something for my 10 year old daughter.
For games or animation?
Godot might be today's analogue for games.
Godot might be today's analogue for games.
what a trip down memory lane.
for some extra nostalgia, check out "one finger death punch 2" game (and its prequel). i bet it's sort of an homage to those animations.
for some extra nostalgia, check out "one finger death punch 2" game (and its prequel). i bet it's sort of an homage to those animations.
This is what the world lost when Adobe Animate/Flash became impractical to pirate and switched to a monthly subscription fee for the Adobe suite.
The slight irony being that Adobe are making themselves slowly irrelevant at the same time. I know so many people who only have Adobe subscriptions now because of the muscle memory built using pirated copies of Photoshop and Flash as broke kids.
I loved the xiao xiao series. They were amazing.
Dude completely forgets StickDeath.com which came before all of this…
The woke crowd of today would have gotten stickdeath.com banned from the internet were it made today :)
Nonsense. Senseless violence in animation has been around as long as studio ghibli.
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I loved stickdeath.com as a kid, but it seemed to have evolved into something much darker over the years.
The first animation that made me love these was the old 'stickman vs door' gif,
Thanks for reminding me of that one
Thanks for reminding me of that one
Xiao Xiao and Ninjai *chef's kiss*
This was one of the .swf animation saved in our disk, I also miss the demo scene.
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the Xiao Xiao Flash series were amazing. I always wondered when someone would come up with a beat'em-up game with that style. Simple, fast-paced, lots of free movement and use of tools/weapons.
Stick figures still fight to this day! Go check out hyunsdojo
Hyun’s dojo was awesome
I remember series of stick man fighting cartoons which starts from simple kung-fu/gun porno in big office tower of (presumably) evil corporation, but progressed to some infernal fights, with Jesus, ghosts, hell, etc.
I'm not sure it was XiaoXiao, I (don't) remember some other letter combination in the names of files.
I'm not sure it was XiaoXiao, I (don't) remember some other letter combination in the names of files.
shame on nike
Oh man I knew exactly what it was when I read the title. Xiao Xiao (and Madness) was the best. Watched them over and over again with friends on my family dell. What a great memory.
Loved Madness, surprised it didn’t get more mentions here. The combination of over the top violence, techno music and hints at a deeper underlying story is what made the series stick for me even more than Xiao Xiao.
I loved playing the game too. They did a good job of making you feel somewhat like the character. Being able to shoot or throw basically everything lol
Youtube used Flash.
Yep. StickDeath was the shit.
>… intense creativity, easy-to-access software, notable but not crippling limitations, almost universal compatibility across the entire technological space of its time, widespread adoption by encouraging free consumption and sharing in an age where “going viral” actually meant something, all combining to influence the entire entertainment industry with one strike after another? That’s something that we’ll never be able to recreate, only remember fondly. All driven by a bunch of guys sitting in their bedrooms who watched too much Xiao Xiao.
https://archive.org/details/flashpoint-a-tribute-to-web-game...