KUUKI, Cuddle & Battle Robot

I had the pleasure to attend the Workshop of Nicholas Kole at la Galeria Roja, a few weeks ago.

It was an absolute blast having one of your favourite artist giving tips and advices and most important, share his own method of approaching a character design.
A lesson that I will remember forever.

The theme Nicholas gave us was "surprise" or "a design that needs another iteration to be explained".
I came up with Kuuki, a robot that acts as a playmate but also a bdyguard for the children.
if Threatened he can inflate via the air valve that he has on the head and transform into a sumo wrestler; the idea came from looking pictures of chubby baby asian kids, which always reminded me a bit sumo wrestlers.
On the other hand, sumo wrestlers, always reminded me of big babies, so I put the two ideas together and came up with this design.