Character Design Personal Project. Design Brief: As this was another personal project the idea behind it was to create a cute and fun character that i could tell stories about. Going back a few years now a question I was asked during a team meeting at work was " What's your spirit animal?" I took a few minutes to think about it and quickly came to the conclusion that it was a Red Panda. I've always been drawn to them and at the time the viral video of the Red Panda being scared by the rock was making its rounds and it just resonated with me so much. I'm pretty introverted and quiet but when needed I can be extroverted and make lots of noise. So in remembering this I thought that a Red Panda would be the perfect choice for a mascot type character. I researched the species more and looked up a lot of different art as a reference and came up with Jirai.