Meet Aorus Chibi
Since its inception, the AORUS brand has had a mascot and namesake in the form of a giant figurine with a hawk-shaped head and wings. Not only that, the brand's logo itself is the AORUS head in profile and there are various figures of it available as part of the merchandising. One particularly striking version is the so-called AORUS Chibi, a cute mini version of the character.
In 2021, AORUS reached out to me to collaborate on bringing the character to life with LEGO® pieces. It provided a great opportunity for me to create another cute character, which I do not get the chance to do that often.
When designing the AORUS Chibi, I wanted to stay close to the original artwork. The head presented a particular challenge as it has a quite specific triangular shape. Those kinds of angles are difficult to rebuild without gaps in LEGO®, as wedge plates only align in certain ways. My goal was to capture the side-profile of the Chibi accurately, with a focus on the shape of the eyes and the beak. At the same time, I aimed to make the model is easy to build and sturdy enough to be played with.
Since the head is so much bigger than the rest of the body, balancing was another challenge. Both, the connection at the neck as well as those at the hip, feature particularly strong ball joints. This limits the range of movement a little bit, but the head can still move up and down, as well as left and right. Similarly, the feet offer enough options for the AORUS Chibi to kick and sit down.
Team Up. Fight On.
I initially designed the Chibi in Orange (Colour-ID 106) with accents in Dark Orange (Colour-ID 38), as those colours fit the AORUS brand the best. However, we always intended to make a range of Icons to allow some level of personalisation. In addition to creating Blue (Colour-ID 23) and White (Colour-ID 1) colour variants, I also included the option to give AORUS Chibi longer eye-lashes, making up six distinct versions of the character.
Based on the provided instructions, the team at AORUS in Taipei built multiple Chibis and used them for photoshoots and promotions. They also launched an online marketing campaign where people were invited to play a mini game in order to win instructions for the LEGO® version as well as AORUS products.
