Twitter Strip Game

About

Twitter Strip Game is an art challenge that involves drawing multiple artworks of the same character, with each subsequent drawing removing one or several items of clothing from them until they are naked. Created by artist Scott Malin in June 2021, the game gained virality as a fan art challenge format on Twitter throughout 2022.

Origin

On June 21st, 2021, artist Scott Malik (@scott_malin) made a tweet^[1] announcing an art challenge featuring his OC character Lucia on Twitter. The challenge involved removing an article of clothing from the character in each subsequent drawing, which were posted once per day, with the item removed determined by a poll. The first tweet in the challenge gained over 1,100 retweets and 16,400 likes in one year (the post and the next two drawings^[2][3] shown below).

Spread

The posts inspired other artists to copy the challenge in the following weeks. For example, on July 16th, 2021, artist @nfasfw^[4] started a similar challenge featuring their OC character Aubrey, with the first post in the series gaining over 1,100 retweets and 14,900 likes in one year (the post and the second drawing shown below, left and center).^[5] On July 27th, artist @Omiza_Zu started the Twitter^[6] Strip Game for their character Birdly, with the tweet gaining over 830 retweets and 9,200 likes in one year (shown below, right).

The format maintained its popularity with artists on Twitter in 2022. For example, on June 6th, 2022, artist @EchoSaber1 started^[7] a Strip Game for the My Hero Academia character Mirko, with the first tweet gaining over 2,100 retweets in five months (shown below, left). On July 1st, artist @yoracrab started^[8] the challenge for 2B from Nier: Automata, with the first tweet gaining over 2,100 retweets and 26,400 likes in four months (shown below, right).

In early November 2022, the format regained prominence with the hashtag "#stripthegenshin," as artists stripped characters from the Genshin Impact video game. In the November subformat, artists requested their posts achieve a certain number of likes and retweets for a certain article of clothing to be removed. For example, on November 6th, 2022, artist @Shaxhi_ started a Twitter^[9] Strip Game for the character Zhongli, with the post gaining over 2,800 retweets and 20,200 likes in three weeks (shown below, left).

Through November 2022, the challenge took a more humorous turn as artists picked unconventional characters for the challenge and subverted it in other ways. For example, on November 13th, artist @xyanaid started^[10] the challenge for Walter White from Breaking Bad, with the first post gaining over 11,600 retweets and 83,000 likes in 10 days (shown below, center). On November 16th, artist @insomnia_tem launched^[11] a "stripe challenge" for Patchouli Knowledge from Touhou Project, with the first post gaining over 600 retweets and 3,300 likes in one week (shown below, right).

The trend maintained virality on Twitter through November 2022, with many artists partaking in the challenge during that period.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References