"gokigen japanese" is an online language learning service that offers Japanese lessons by native teachers. I developed a promotional character to make people more attached to the service. The character is mostly used on social media.
The tentative character created for the service's initial release lacked facial expressions with a good reason. Since we Japanese tend to feel familiar with such a character with neutral expressions, we believed it was cute.
On the other hand, Western characters come mainly from cartoons and are characterized by their expressive and comical traits. I assumed that our target users would be familiar with such characters.
Nevertheless, several characters from Japan are popular worldwide. I thought that the character should be in a distinctive Japanese style to represent a service originating from Japan. I proposed two ideas of the characters with cheerful expressions based on Japan-like cuteness.
It was decided to proceed with Design B, and based on client feedback, I made final tweaks. Its simplicity characterized design B, intentionally composed of the same shapes, but the client was concerned about the angular, robotic feel. I modified it by dropping the corners appropriately and adding roundness to give it a softer impression.
I created 10 poses for different scenes. This renewal makes the characters much more expressive than the original design.
