Lucky Charms: Emote Collection

Cindy Liu

My partner (who goes by Lucky) has recently amassed a steady following on his Twitch channel, and asked me if I’d be willing to draw some proprietary digital emotes for his stream chats. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to include the six emotes in our “Play” issue, as not only do they embody frivolity, creativity, and a happy-go-lucky air, but they also represent an aspect of our relationship I love---reconnecting with my inner child and not taking ourselves too seriously!

1) “Fancy L”

Cursive L with blue marble accents. I was playing around with colors and landed with this one---it reminded me so much of the 3D scales in The Rainbow Fish, which I loved reading in elementary school.

2) “Four-Leaf Clover”

Clover with asparagus green airbrushing and gold glitter accents. One of the aspects of my creative process I’m working on is letting go of perfectionism. This was the ideal sandbox to be more free experimenting with textures and layers.

3) “Piplup”

Piplup (and its evolved form Empoleon) is Lucky’s favorite Pokémon. A water-type starter Pokémon, Piplup is as cute as it is fun to draw. This was the emote I spent the longest on as I wanted the lines and shadows to be clean-cut and almost shiny in the instantly recognizable Piplup colors.

4) “King’s Gambit”

Lucky is a talented chess player, so I wanted to add a nod to that with this emote, which was deceptively difficult to draw freehand because chess relies so much on symmetry, order, and geometry. It was fun to include an emote with a more neutral palette.

5) “Slorp”

We love ramen in this house! Buldak carbonara is our fave :)

6) “Empoleon”

Empoleon is a majestic Pokémon with an arresting presence (and weirdly also looks like Post Malone??), and I wanted this emote to have a more sketched-out feel to it versus the Piplup. My goal was to add more dimension and texture since Piplup turned out looking more polished.

All drawn by hand using ProCreate on iPad.