Bunny business bonanza

• Source: Global Times
• [07:50 January 12 2010]
• Comments

By Sherman So

For 24-year-old "Momo" Wang Liyuan, creator of the hugely popular Tuzki rabbit character and emoticon popular on QQ and MSN and elsewhere, 2009 was a memorable one. The official website, www.clubtuzki.com, was launched and won a gold award for best design from Promax/BDA, a worldwide association of broadcast and multimedia designers.

Her first book, I, Tuzki, U, won the best book design at the Seventh National Art Exhibition and Book Design Awards organized by the China Publishers Association, and also became a best seller in many Chinese cities. Over 500 fans lined up for Wang's autograph at an I, Tuzki U book signing and the first Tuzki iPhone application, TuzkiSnap, was on the market in November.

All of this was unimaginable when Wang first developed the bunny in the end of 2006 while a third year student at the Animation School in Communication University of China in Beijing.

"Sina Blog was getting hot among my friends. Everyone set up a blog those days. So, I set up mine. But I didn't write much. I drew pictures and cartoons, " said Wang. "It helped to record my feelings and improved my skill (in artwork)."

Thus Tuzki, whose personality contains shades of Wang's personality, was born. The name is an amalgamation of tu, Putonghua for rabbit, and "zki" sprang from Zebatinski, a character in Wang's favorite novel, Isaac Asimov's Spell My Name with an S.

The first Tuzki version was more detailed than the current one, but as Wang tried again and again, and the simple rabbit character with lines as eyes was finally born.

Wang then brought Tuzki to life in a short computer animation expressing anger, happiness, moodiness, embarrassment and more – the popular shorthand emotions used during online chats.

"Most emoticons are facial expression only. But I use body language to express a feeling," said Wang. "Tuzki has a bland face, but the body moves a lot to express different feelings and it was an instant hit."

"I put the first set of emotions in my blog for people to download," said Wang. "A week later, some of my friends were sending me them back to me." Through online chat platforms, such as QQ, Microsoft Window Live Messager and e-mails, Tuzki spread like a happy friendly virus.