Yuki and Mika belong to OTTO and appear only in work for or with OTTO. Whenever one of the 35 official motifs fits, it comes first; new motifs in this style are drafts, not OTTO artwork.
The brief
style: soft 3D clay illustration, matte plasticine-like surfaces with fine hand-made texture, rounded chunky forms, slightly oversized hands, friendly and calm, like the reference images
ground: flat seamless beige #f5e6d7 (OTTO base token beige-90), no horizon, no gradient, soft contact shadow under the subject only
palette: pastel and mid tones only, taken from the OTTO base palette: yellow #fffaaf and #ffeb91, sky blue #c5eaff and #6ea0eb, lilac #c5afe9, violet hair #6c49cf, pink #ffbef5 and #e89fdd, mint #b4e1d7, warm red #de3e64 for small accents, cardboard brown for parcels; no neon, no black surfaces except phone screens
skin: invented characters (Yuki, Mika, new generic figures) always the OTTO stylised dusty mauve clay, mid tone #bc829c, lit #c891a8, shaded #a86b86; figures of real people use their own natural skin tone as a fixed hex given in the motif (see the person's reference page), never the mauve and never taken freely from the photo light
character (only when the motif asks for Yuki): young person with voluminous violet curly hair, mauve skin as above, oversized soft yellow sweater, light blue jeans, red sneakers, simple dot eyes and a small smile
light: soft even studio light from the top left, gentle ambient occlusion, no rim light, no glare
composition: one subject, centred, generous empty beige space on both sides, whole subject inside the frame, format 8:3 so it can be cropped to 4:3 without losing the subject
never: text, letters, numbers, logos, watermarks, UI text on screens (use simple grey wireframe blocks), photographic realism, glossy plastic, busy backgrounds, more than one scene
Skin stays the same
A character has the same skin in every picture.
| Character | Skin (mid / lit / shade) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Invented OTTO characters (Yuki, Mika, generic figures) | #bc829c / #c891a8 / #a86b86 | measured on the official illustrations |
| Leander Endres | #eeac93 / #f6c3ae / #d4907a | his press photo, corrected for the warm light (portrait page) |
The mauve keeps invented characters neutral and tied to no one. On a real person it looks unnatural, so real people keep a natural tone, fixed once per person and reused.
A picture passes when two or three skin spots (cheek, arm, hand, not clothing) sit within a colour difference of 8 (delta E) of the character's mid tone; the official illustrations measure 1.0 and 3.4. When a real photo serves as reference, it gives identity only: face shape, hair, glasses, beard and clothing, never skin colour, light or realism.
Example motifs
- A soft heart-shaped cushion resting on an open gift box.
- Yuki looking into an empty shopping bag, puzzled but relaxed.
- A parcel on a doormat next to a potted plant.
Pictures in this style
Select a picture to see it at full size.
Wishlist
Components
Foundations
Getting started
Imagery
References
Rules
Storybook
Tokens
