Kiki the Cyber Squirrel

Kiki the Cyber Squirrel, normally known as Kiki, is the mascot of free and open-source digital painting software Krita. First introduced in 2012, she appears in Krita's startup splash artwork, about dialogue and merchandises, and has received many fanarts made by Krita users and non-Krita users alike. Her designer is Tyson Tan.

History

Long before Kiki's debut, Krita's community learned the fact that "Krita" is also the Albanian word for squirrel.^[1] As a result, a few squirrel-based mascot ideas were posted to KDE Forums.^[2] On 26 December 2012, Tyson Tan posted his idea of an animal-based icon for Krita, along with it was an anthropomorphic version as a mascot idea.^[3] The icon didn't stick, but the mascot was well-received and later used as the cover for Krita's 2.6 introduction booklet.^[4] The mascot did not have a name at the time.

Before Krita 2.8's release, Tyson renewed Kiki's design, adding pink as decorative color to resemble Krita's new icon. He also gave the mascot a name: Kiki the Cyber Squirrel. The new artwork was used as Krita 2.8's startup splash artwork.^[5] Since then, every major Krita version has been released with a new Kiki artwork from Tyson with of a different design.

Tyson has donated Kiki's copyright to Krita Foundation,^[6] and all his Kiki artworks have been licensed under Creative Common BY-SA and GNU GPL.

Appearance

Although her detail looks different in each version, there is a common theme:

She is a cartoon anthropomorphic tree squirrel.
Her primary color is paper white, with dark grey as secondary, pink and sky blue as decorative colors.
She has Flower-shaped pupils, ears and other details.
She has some robotic details like the seams between her parts, but they have long, curvy organic outlines.

Fanarts

Kiki has been well-received by general audience. A large of number of Kiki fanarts have been made by Krita and non-Krita users, in the forms of 2D artwork, 3D model, animation and even a highly-detailed figurine model kit.