This is the splash art I created for Krita 4.2. Kiki is drawing on top of a seaside hill.
Krita is a free and open source digital painting application. Kiki the Cyber Squirrel is the mascot I designed for Krita. I also maintain Krita’s simplified Chinese translations — across the app, documentation, websites, and more.
Krita website: https://krita.org/
Other versions of Kiki
- Kiki the Cyber Squirrel: mascot of digital painting app Krita (this page)
- Kiki: support character in Electric Hearts, Sunset Era
- Kiki: support character in Spirit Animals in Disguise
- Kiki the Robot Squirrel: support character in Electric Hearts, Evernight Era
- Connections between Electric Hearts & Spirit Animals in Disguise
- Characters based on my FOSS mascots
Krita 4.2 introduced a wider splash art format. I design the composition for just that. In previous splash arts I often used a low saturation color palette. In this picture, I tried to use an intensely saturated palette. I emphasized the blue skylight to make everything look refreshing.
I have always been dissatisfied with this splash. It was supposed to be a sea view, but I chose to stage it on top of a seaside hill, far away from the water surface. The key elements of the sea exists as concepts, but they have no substance. The color selection was also problematic — too saturated and abstract. At first glance, one can “understand” the elements in the scene, but unlikely to actually “feel” them.
In the 2026 splash, I re-challenged the sea scene, and wrote a more in-depth analysis in that article.
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