电子松鼠琪琪 (Kiki the Cyber Squirrel) 是我为自由开源绘画软件 Krita 设计的吉祥物。这是我为 Krita 2.8 绘制的启动图，绘制于 2013-10-06。这是 Kiki 首次作为 Krita 的启动图登场。

为了强调琪琪的“吉祥物”特性，我对前一版过于特别的设计进行了大刀阔斧的修改，让她看起来更接近一般动漫，身材比例也更接近常见的吉祥物。她的配色根据 Krita 新图标中的颜色 (青-品红-黄) 进行了调整，但为了整体的稳定性，去掉了黄色，并将青置换为天蓝，品红置换为粉红，以强调琪琪的少女特性。

我原本打算让此版设计成为 Kiki 的固定设计，但到了 2017 年 Krita 4.0 的时候就开始画腻了。于是后来基本上是每一张新的启动图都我都会重新设计一次琪琪的造型。而为了让配色更稳定，科技感更突出，2020 的 Krita 4.2 开始去掉了天蓝色，增加了黑色的比例。

只不过因为这是琪琪第一次成为启动图的主角，加上这个版本的琪琪可能比较容易画，所以画这个版本的琪琪的人比较多。

Kiki the Cyber Squirrel is the mascot I designed for Krita, a free and open source digital painting application. This is the splash art I created for Krita 2.8, which was Kiki’s official debut as Krita’s mascot.

In this version, I changed Kiki’s design over the prototype version drastically. She now looks more cartoonish, and her head-body proportion is closer to that of a typical mascot. Her robotic nature is largely omitted, so she looks more generic. Her color scheme also changed to match Krita’s new logo (cyan-magenta-yellow). In order to build a more visually stable color palette, yellow was dropped, cyan was changed to sky blue, and magenta was changed to pink. The new pastel colors also work with Kiki being a cute girl.

I was going to make this version a fixed design for Kiki, but I got tired of it when I was drawing a new splash art for Krita 4.0 in 2017. I then began to give Kiki a new design in every new splash. To stabilize her color scheme even further, I took out sky blue in 2020, and increased the amount of black/dark gray in the color palette. Her base design concept remains largely unchanged.

It seems people tend to draw Kiki in this first version. I think it was either because of it being the first time people saw her, or this version is indeed the easiest one to draw because I held back the robotic details.