TikZ people

Why do we make fancy things with TikZ? Because we can.

Nils Fleischhacker created tikzpeople, a package for drawing people shapes with TikZ. It was heavily inspired by Microsoft Visio’s people shapes. It provides real pgf shapes with anchors for convenient use in TikZ drawings:

The original purpose was using people shapes in drawings that illustrate parties in cryptographic protocols. You know, famous Alice and Bob.

You can use the shapes by simple commands:

\node[businessman, minimum size=1.5cm] at (0,0) {};

Since he was on a roll, he created many further shapes. Here are sample, as all images here taken from the package manual:

And there are option for customizing shapes, such as color and patterns for skin, hair, shirt, hat, trousers, buttons, and more details. Plus some general additions. For example, kind of a frequently used standard symbol (or not) is the female, good but also evil, mirrored chef / cook in front of a monitor:

\node[chef, evil, female, good, mirrored, monitor, minimum size=1.5cm] {};

Why did he? Because he can.