Koish Sports

What started as a sticker brief turned into a full character system. By the end I had designed two distinct mascots, a complete IP framework for each, a set of animated stickers, and a concept for a shared social universe built around both characters.

The stakeholders had already been through one round of character design: two ball-shaped mascots, one for pickleball and one for tennis. They weren't satisfied. My job was to start fresh and deliver a sticker pack ready for WeChat.

I was given creative latitude on direction, which meant the first problem wasn't drawing anything. It was working out what the right mascot even looked like.

I explored several directions before landing on the cat: a generic character, a fish-inspired design, and variations on the cat form across body proportion and personality.

The calico won. Its spotted pattern references a pickleball's perforated surface directly, which grounds the character in the sport without being literal about it. Stakeholders approved the direction and I moved forward.

That gap wasn't in my brief, but it was going to limit everything the brand could do with the character. I proposed a second mascot: a tennis cat designed as a companion to the first, giving Koish a duo it could use across campaigns rather than a single figure that only spoke to half its business.

The stakeholders approved. I designed the tennis cat as a deliberate contrast. Where the pickleball cat is calm, cute and easygoing, the tennis cat is energetic, competitive and a bit of a bully. I tested warm and cool colourways against the brand palette before settling.

With both characters defined I moved into sticker ideation, sketching over 30 concepts across three rounds. Each mapped a scenario rooted in a real sports moment: winning, losing, being exhausted, trash talking, encouraging a teammate.

The goal was stickers that felt native to how people actually talk during and after a game, not generic emoji replacements. Every sketch was judged on three things: whether it would animate well, whether the emotion read instantly, and whether it meant anything to the Koish audience specifically.

The finished set covers celebration, exhaustion, apology, encouragement and competitive trash talk. All copy is in Chinese, because the whole thing lives in WeChat and the audience is Chinese-speaking.

If I took this further, the next step would be a campaign built around both characters together: short animated clips showing their dynamic in real court scenarios, designed to be reposted and shared rather than just reacted with.