Wikipe-tan
A remake in my style of the original character by Kasuga for the unofficial mascot of Wikipedia, a Krita artwork licensed under the CC-By-Sa-2.5, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic.
Wikipe-tan reads and edits the Wikipe-tan page on a transparent neon retro-futuristic tablet with a stylus. I changed her costume to take distance from the maid costume not really aligning with what I wanted to depict. She is a focused reader and editor.
I did this piece as a side project for testing a new set of brushes and workflow. Click on the picture to enlarge it to 3148x2858px (2,2MiB).
Links:
License Attribution notice: "A remake by David Revoy of an original character designed by Kasuga, CC-By-Sa-2.5"
14 comments
Yeah, I like the improvement on the costume. Loving that reflection in her eye, very Escher-like!
Is there a source for this? How easy is it to change out the article?
This image is wonderful. I edit Wikipedia and your Wikipe-tan looks way more like me, and Wikipedia editors in general, than the maid-costume version (see photos from any Wikimania conference on Commons; we're mostly sorta scruffy and academic-looking).
I casually tried to imagine what a better anthropomorphization would look like some time ago, and this is startlingly similar to what I imagined, even to the lighting (I had her crosslegged, lit in blue by her laptop, with the mop and bucket on the floor beside her, in a loose black turtleneck and knit trousers... I never drew it, sorry).
I really like the "work" symbolism used on WP (the badge for administrators, editors particularly respected and trusted by the community and elected to special privileges after intense discussion, is a mop, because they get to clean up messes). But I agree that the maid costume doesn't quite seem the way to bring that wry appraisal to an anthropomorphic personification. If I am cleaning up a mess I am more likely to be wearing stained and darned black, and there's pretty much no chance I'll be wearing white frills and a short skirt with fragile stockings!
I'm not entirely sure what colour her hair is; maybe light brown? I actually sort of liked the original blue, as a sort of implicit statement about systemic bias. But maybe it's green. It looks realistic, anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias
(yes, that page is in the Wikipedia backstage space, where page names begin with "Wikipedia:")
She looks more mature, too, less moe. Maybe your version merits a different honorific suffix:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_honorifics
Medieval illustrators used a six-pointed halo, like a hexagon but often with concave-outwards sides, to designate a figure as allegorical. But square or clipped-corner, slightly-octagonal haloes, like this one, were used for portraits of real, living people. So the glowing background is interestingly appropriate, too; I like it.
Are you asking if the page shown on the green glowy tablet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan, can be replaced in the image? So she's reading and editing another page?
(this image is also now included in that page, which is a cool bit of recursion)
Kinda think that it'd be cool to be able to generate versions with different articles if Krita could render this and run run headless.
This art looks much "cleaner" than previous ones, I don't know, its sharp as well as smooth, something like that but I think it looks better than previous ones.
Thank you for noticing, I tested to paint with new brushes and I tried to get cleaner edges and steps. I'm learning new things :)
I uploaded the source layered Krita file here https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/files/comissions.html
The content on the tablet is indeed easy to replace (just invert color, HSV colorize, a GMIC Degradation > Blur 'Bloom' filter for the glow. and a perspective deform, put the layer as a "Screen" blending mode).
Thanks for noticing. A rare time I zoom while painting to detail eyes that much.
Thank you for the feedback about this piece.
Maybe Wikipedia-San :3
Oh, and true about the color of hair. I painted them blue at first, but because all the ambiance of the piece turned blue, they don't look that blue anymore.
I don't think Krita can perform complex operation from command line; the list here is short https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/linux_command_line.html , but maybe if there is a way to launch a Python script from the CLI, then it has no limit.
If I had to automatize something like that; I would probably use imagemagick. I can see how to do the invert, the colorize, maybe the glow , and pasting it with a blending mode on the top. The only part complex: the perspective deformation of the four corner. The doc on the distort page looks like a lot of geometry to do https://legacy.imagemagick.org/Usage/distorts/ :)
Can Krita do image transformations on file layers without rendering/rasterizing them first? That'd be the way to do it.
Good idea. Yes, a file layer can receive transformation mask and I just tested: it works on File Layer. Also the invert, Colorize and even the glow (a gaussian blur with opacity reduced with a blending mode should do the trick) can be also filter mask applied to the file layer. I just have no idea if Krita export while working headless from CLI will refetch the filelayer and apply well all the stack of filter and mask. It should, but it looks like a 'terra incognota' of beta-testing and a land with possible bugs.
What a gorgeous art for one of the most iconic personification of Wikipedia! Love it.
Post a reply
The comments on this article are archived and unfortunately not yet connected to a dedicated post on Mastodon. Feel free to continue the discussion on the social media of your choice. Link to this post:You can also quote my account so I'll get a notification.
(eg. @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org on my Mastodon profile.)