cute rabbit icons come from

You see it everywhere from MSN chat windows to blogs. But do you know where do these cute rabbit icons come from? Who made them? And why? I have been wondering who made them for ages because it’s nicely drawn and animated. The expressions on the little ones are captivating. For those of you who are clueless about this, here’s the 39 tuzkis.

These are the works of Wang Momo, a student in animation department of Beijing Broadcasting Institute created this popular lagomorph.

Here’s an excerpt taken from an article on Shanghaiist.
Wang stated that she created this character to be able to write her diary in a graphic form. Her friends and classmates always nicknamed her “rabbit” as well. The first Tuzki was very simple, and just waved his arms and shook his head. Then she created more pictures and small animations for this character based on her real life experiences. To date, Tuzki has 39 different expressions. And thanks to the 150,000,000 Tecent QQ users and 20 million MSN messenger users in China, the popularity of Tuzki also generates income for this young woman. She is now designing Tuzki posters and postcards, which will take the rabbit beyond the definition