For people like me who would like to make PDF-reports with this kind of graph-style without resorting to Mathematica, take a look at this TeX-solution[1]. It utilizes the random step-decoration in Tikz to achieve a similar result.<p>[1]: <a href="http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd-style-diagram-in-tex" rel="nofollow">http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd-sty...</a>
This question reminds me of the work Microsoft Research developed to automatically create 'hand drawn' maps for Bing. The process relies on four steps: data selection, data simplication, layout and decoration. The tool seems to be offline now, but when I tried it, it worked well for simple direction sets, but like the charts problem, it sometimes needed human curation to ensure that the selection and simplification steps were meaningful.<p>Details: <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/destinationmaps-012510.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/destinatio...</a><p>Example: <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/destination_maps/results/html/map_007.html" rel="nofollow">http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/destinati...</a>
Hang on people... The whole 'Randall Rocks/cool factor' aside, let us not forget the purpose of information visualisation.<p>I don't see much discussion about the ability of these charts to condense large amounts of data into compact spaces. No mention of these devices ability to encode a concept into a visual experience... Not to put too fine a point to it but... What Would Edward Tufte Say?
Where I could <i>really</i> enjoy this is in the context of textbooks and tutorials. Sometimes a hand-drawn figure is able to convey an abstract idea much more clearly. When I see figures representing manifolds (e.g. the many figures in Roger Penrose's Road To Reality), it's easier for my mind to understand them as abstract notions rather than 2-d geometric entities on the page.<p>The problem is that good hand-drawn figures are <i>hard</i> - xkcd just makes it look easy.<p>So awesome work!
It isn't in the same style as Xkcd graphs, but the OmniGraphSketcher program lets you hand draw graphs like that, without data.<p><a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraphsketcher/overview/" rel="nofollow">http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraphsketcher/overview...</a>
Working as an animator, we found that a pretty good way to mimic wobbly lines like this was to use a 2d fractal as displacement map. Does anyone know of any algorithms for 2d displacement? Would be quite fun to port it javascript
I often find a need to have "mockup" graphs that actually are easy to produce from real data, packaging this up seems like a win for me.<p>One for the backburner list.
Would it be possible to do something like this in Wolfram Alpha? I'm not sure how complicated you can make the input there, but it's using the same Mathematica engine, so I imagine it's possible somehow...
how about using gimp effects rather than a programmatic solutions. For example. Animation -> Rippling.<p><a href="http://postimage.org/image/5ki873h2v/" rel="nofollow">http://postimage.org/image/5ki873h2v/</a>
> <i>Any tips on how one can create xkcd-style graphs? Where things look hand-drawn and imprecise.</i><p>Umm, draw them by hand? I don't want to seem to be stating the obvious, but ...<p>Options:<p>* Take some fine-point felt pens, draw the chart on paper, and scan it.<p>* Use a drawing program that has a freehand option, a mode where you can sketch using a mouse or other pointing device.<p>* Take an art course, fail the course, but succeed in getting the requisite materials.
I'm not used to Mathematica and before I spend some time deciphering this: Are they distorting the whole image, or picking parts of it? It kinda looks like the former, which exaggerates some parts a bit, compared to xkcd.
#creative<p>I like this idea, but the results have what I would say is "very low momentum" in them (not speaking with any kind of terminology here, just ad hoc) meaning that just as when you write L E T T E R S e..x..t..r..e...m...e...l...y... s--l---o---w---l---y you get much more wiggle in them, the two images on this page are very very wavy, as though the pen that drew them had no momentum.<p>isn't there a way to have lines be drawn by a hand that has inertia/momentum and is trying to follow the logical curve, but just wavers a certain percentage and correct as it goes along? This is what gets (in my opinion) the result we see. Someone drawing at a good pace by hand and correcting while he does so. not a "random deviation" around the logical path, whch is what these results seem to be more like.