XKCD Style#

Render neurons in the hand-drawn XKCD sketch style, just for fun.

If you don't already know: matplotlib has an xkcd mode that makes plots look like they were drawn by hand - a fun way to visualize neurons.

Dial in the wobble

plt.xkcd() takes three knobs: scale (how big the wiggles are), randomness (how often the line wiggles) and length (the length of each wiggle). Tweak them to taste.

The recipe is the same whether you sketch a single neuron or a whole scene - just wrap your navis.plot2d call in a with plt.xkcd(...) block:

Single neuronNeurons + neuropil

with plt.xkcd(scale=5, randomness=10, length=200):
    navis.plot2d(n, method="2d", c="k", view=("x", "-z"), radius=False, lw=1.5)

with plt.xkcd(scale=5, randomness=10, length=200):
    navis.plot2d(
        [nl, neuropil], method="2d", c="k", view=("x", "-z"),
        lw=1.2, volume_outlines="both", radius=False,
    )

import navis
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Get a few example neurons and a volume
nl = navis.example_neurons()
neuropil = navis.example_volume("neuropil")

# Make the neuropil mostly transparent
neuropil.color = (0, 0, 0, 0.02)

# Plot in xkcd style
with plt.xkcd(scale=5, randomness=10, length=200):
    fig, ax = navis.plot2d(
        [nl, neuropil],
        method="2d",
        c="k",
        view=("x", "-z"),
        lw=1.2,
        volume_outlines="both",
        radius=False,
    )

    ax.grid(False)

plt.tight_layout()

Out:

findfont: Font family 'xkcd' not found.
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Total running time of the script: ( 0 minutes 2.214 seconds)

Download Python source code: tutorial_plotting_07_xkcd.py

Download Jupyter notebook: tutorial_plotting_07_xkcd.ipynb

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