Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When stick figures fought

animationobsessive.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 148 posts

Re: When stick figures fought

#51

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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

Re: When stick figures fought

#52

Post by AlexAplin »

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.

Re: When stick figures fought

#53

Post by soulofmischief »

fortydegrees wrote: post #36
robmerki wrote: post #4

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.

Re: When stick figures fought

#54

Post by blacklion »

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.

Re: When stick figures fought

#55

Post by soulofmischief »

taneq wrote: post #47
nkrisc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: When stick figures fought

#57

Post by anymouse123456 »

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.

Re: When stick figures fought

#58

Post by Semaphor »

swah wrote: post #45
Semaphor wrote: post #20

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

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

Re: When stick figures fought

#59

Post by andai »

A couple of years ago, an archivist named Ben Latimore put out an ebook. Since Adobe began the retirement of Flash in 2017, he’s been preserving .SWF files and the history around them. His book is a chronicle of the Flash era, which he sees as a lost golden age. On the final page, he wrote this about that time:

>… 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...

Re: When stick figures fought

#60

Post by nntwozz »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #57

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.

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.

Post reply on HN