concept

The Idea

Zucky was born from a simple need: Meta deserved a mascot, and the person holding the pen loves cats. Thinking about Meta beyond the social networks meant thinking about the product everyone was filming with, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, famous on every feed for how easily they turn a glance into a short video. The first sketch was just a kitten with a few of Zuckerberg's traits, starting with the hair.

Nobody knows who pushed Zucky to the production branch. The changelog says "minor fixes". The logs say otherwise. By the time anyone noticed, he was already wearing the Ray-Bans, sitting in on internal standups, and shipping code no one dared to revert. While the rest of the industry builds the metaverse, Zucky sits on the keyboard, reads the stock chart through AR glasses, and purrs at the data stream. That is the whole thesis. No roadmap, no promises, just a cat with early access.

The Art

Zucky was drawn in Krita, digital from the very first stroke, and he has been under construction for a good while now. Thick outlines, flat colors, glasses too big for his face on purpose. It is a cartoon style that could carry its own big-budget animated series.

One drawing style had to be rejected along the way. It was more exaggerated and more striking, but it was not Zucky, and it did not fit the pairing with Meta, whose products are minimalist.

Every sprite on the home page (walking, scratching, yawning, sleeping) was animated from the same base drawing, pixel by pixel.

The Cat

Zucky is ambitious. As a kitten he spent hours over board games about ancient Greece, building and conquering empires, and he grew up certain he could conquer the world. When he cannot own something, he creates, or buys, the next big thing. In his head he is a Greek cat god. In everyone else's, he is just a normal kitten. Any resemblance to the real Zuck is pure coincidence. (Or not.)

Gallery

The Banner

The official artwork started as a sketch of Zucky watching two screens at once. It became the banner: one lens on the chart, one lens on us.