Tyson Tan is a Chinese concept artist and character designer. He redesigned KDE's mascotKonqi and designed a few other mascots for free and open-source software projects. Tyson speaks three languages: Chinese, English, and Japanese.[‡ 1]
Tyson is observed to have been using only free and open-source software (FOSS) to work since 2012.[‡ 2] He has been supporting several FOSS projects in various ways. He has a permissive attitude for others to use his works, and licenses most of his artworks under free licenses like Creative Commons.[‡ 3]
Art style

Tyson has an art style that draws inspirations from both anime and western cartoons. He draws mostly anthropomorphic animal characters.[‡ 4] He is also known for his ability of designing robotic characters with organic shapes while keeping a level of convincing mechanical details.[‡ 5]
Works
FLOSS Mascots


Tyson designed Kiki the Cyber Squirrel as the mascot for digital painting software Krita in 2012, and has been Krita's startup artwork artist since.[2] In 2013, his re-design concept of KDE's mascot Konqi was chosen from a contest and has been used since KDE version 5.x.[3] He also designed Kate the woodpecker as the mascot for advanced text editor Kate in 2014.[4] Tyson submitted a mascot (Libbie the Cyber Oryx) for LibreOffice during a contest run by The Document Foundation in late 2017. However, the contest was cancelled.[5][6][7]
Video games
Tyson drew several pieces of fan-art for the platform gameFreedom Planet after its release. His fan-art was later adopted by the game's developer and publisher, GalaxyTrail, for promotional purposes.[8] He later became the concept artist and character designer of the game's sequel, Freedom Planet 2.[9]
Books
Tyson's works have been included in the following books:
- IMAGINE: the art of Imaginary Friends Studios (Artwork used)[10]
- Furries Furever: Draw and Color Anthro Characters in a Variety of Styles (Artist and writer of Chapter 6)[11][12]
- Digital Painting with Krita 2.9: Learn All of the Tools to Create Your Next Masterpiece (Cover artist)[13]
- Dessin et peinture numérique avec Krita (Artwork used)[14]
- Made with Krita 2016 (Artwork used)[15]
See also
- Freedom Planet 2
- Konqi, mascot of KDE
- Kiki the Cyber Squirrel, mascot of Krita
- Kate the woodpecker, mascot of Kate editor
- LibreOffice § Mascot competition for details about Libbie the Cyber Oryx
References
- ↑"关于本站 » 黑兔工场". archive.is. 2013-06-21. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) - ↑Krita Foundation. "Krita's mascot Kiki". krita.org. Archived from the original on 2017-10-30. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"26 Years of KDE". Archived from the original on 2017-12-10. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"Kate's mascot woodpecker". Kate Editor. 2014-10-12. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"LibreOffice contest entry". Twitter. 2017-09-28. Archived from the original on 2017-11-20. Retrieved 2018-03-27.
- ↑"LibreOffice Mascot: Iterating the submissions". The Document Foundation Blog. 2017-11-13. Archived from the original on 2018-03-27. Retrieved 2018-03-27.
- ↑"Statement About LibreOffice Mascot Project". The Document Foundation Blog. 2017-11-20. Retrieved 2025-09-07.
- ↑BurntToShreds (2015-08-07). "@galaxytrail keeping it real with Freedom Planet. Excellent art for the booth! #RTX #RTX2015". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2019-05-15. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"Freedom Planet 2 - Now in Development!". freedomplanet2.com. Archived from the original on 2017-07-11. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"IMAGINE: THE ART OF IMAGINARY FRIENDS STUDIOS". Greg Johnson Books. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
- ↑Hodges, Jared; Cibos, Lindsay (2014-07-16). Furries Furever: Draw and Color Anthro Characters in a Variety of Styles. IMPACT. ISBN 9781440334474. Archived from the original on 2022-05-30. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
- ↑"Furries Furever: How to Draw Furries | NorthLight". NorthLight. Archived from the original on 2017-07-10. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
- ↑Petrovic, Scott L. (2015-10-28). Digital Painting with Krita 2.9: Learn All of the Tools to Create Your Next Masterpiece. Louvus Media. ISBN 9780996851701. Archived from the original on 2022-05-30. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
- ↑GIET, Timothée (2016-03-10). Dessin et peinture numérique avec Krita. Editions D-BookeR. ISBN 9782822703802.
- ↑Foundation, Krita. "Made with Krita 2016 — the Krita Artbook | Krita". krita.org. Archived from the original on 2017-09-06. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
Primary sources
In the text, these references are preceded by a double dagger (‡):
- ↑"Tyson Tan (@TysonTanX) | Twitter". twitter.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-10. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑Tyson Tan (2017-06-16). "Welcome to Linux bois! Do I look like I'm scared by a little meltdown by system update?!...LET'S GOOOO". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2019-05-09. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"Cloud White v4". DeviantArt. Archived from the original on 2018-06-09. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑"Tyson Tan's Deviantart Gallery". deviantART. Archived from the original on 2017-07-13. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
- ↑Tyson Tan (2016-07-08). "#オリロボ ケモロボ専門です。". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- Living people
- Video game artists
- Chinese artists
- 1984 births