I decided to replace my old Mr. Platypus with a newly created character Tacchi, an echidna. This idea has arisen few times before but I never had enough time to design Tacchi.

When doing Mr. Platypus for my Gravatar and favicon, I did not spend a lot of time. It also did not take a lot of effort. It took just 5 minutes or so~, using a brush to make the lineart and paint bucket to color it.

This time, it took me quite some time. My idea to make a new character based on another monotreme, Echidna wasn’t just popped out today. I have loved Echidna for quite a long time. Well, I did love Platypus first, then Echidna, (and then Baobab). I was bored with my Platypus character, since I’ve used it for on-going 2 years. And also there are other reasons.

So guys, let me introduce you to the newly-trademark of Fiona Angelina, Tacchi the Echidna.

Tacchi

I want to name him Ecchi at first, a short for Echidna. But, it turns out that Ecchi is the synonym for hentai (Japanese word for something porn), resulting in changes of Ecchi’s name into Tacchi. My model for Tacchi is a short-beaked Echidna (found in Google), which has Latin name Tachyglossus aculeatus. Tacchi is short for Tachyglossus. Just that simple

It took me 3 hours (including chatting), supported by Google (references); pencil, paper, CanoScan Lide 100 (sketches); Adobe Illustrator CS 2 (lineart); and Adobe Photoshop CS 2 (coloring).

Oh God! I really love Tacchi. This is how he looks in my desktop.

Really satisfied with how Tacchi looks. Next project maybe creating another image of Baobab.