I Tried It: The Story of a Complete Beginner Making LINE Emojis Using Only a Smartphone

I made them!

The purpose of making them

I keep a diary every day, and the little faces I draw at the end of my sentences are perfect for expressing my emotions, so I really liked them. The reason I started this was because I thought, 'I want to use these on LINE too.'
It was entirely for my own sake.

Now, time to make them!

That said, I had never drawn digital art at all,
and I had no idea what to use or how to draw them.
I was completely lost.

I started by taking photos of illustrations I drew on paper with my iPhone camera and painstakingly making the backgrounds transparent using Canva.

But I thought, 'This is tough,' and wondered if there was some way to draw them digitally,
so I started drawing with my finger in the Notes app that comes pre-installed on the iPhone.

I thought, 'This is actually pretty good!?' and
took screenshots of them, made the backgrounds transparent in Canva, and
went ahead and applied for LINE emojis!

The struggle with LINE Creators

I had made LINE stickers of my pet dog before,
and since I had the impression that it went smoothly back then,
I felt like, 'This should be easy!'

And so, I went to LINE Creators.
Then, I struggled because the page was hard to read at first.

I figured out that I had to press the [New Registration] button in the top left of this screen to start.
(It even took time to get to that point)

If I want to say one thing loudly to anyone thinking of making LINE emojis from now on, it is this:

'First, look at the guidelines'

That is what happened.
It's common sense, but you really have to check the sizes and rules properly at the beginning...

I made them without looking at the guidelines at all and
tried to register the emojis, but
I kept getting rejected by errors ( ；∀；)
I brought it on myself...

After all that, I finally submitted them!
I finally reached the point where all that was left was to wait for the review, feeling excited 🎶.

As a result, none of them passed the review.

To my surprise! All of the illustrations were rejected!
Roughly speaking, the reasons were
that the transparency wasn't done correctly, and the lines were too thin to be recognized as LINE emojis.

LINE stickers are okay even if the inside of the illustration is transparent, but
I learned at this point that for emojis, the inside of the illustration must be completely filled in.
(It's written in the guidelines, which is why you have to look at the guidelines first.)

Since lines that are too thin are also not allowed,
it meant I had to redraw everything and start from scratch.

A revolutionary encounter

I thought there was a limit to drawing on the screen with my finger, so I went to the nearby Can Do without much expectation, and there it was. A stylus!
I'm sorry for saying I didn't have much expectation...
I bought the stylus with a feeling of great gratitude, thinking, 'They really do have everything...'

By the way, it wasn't a 100-yen item, but a 300-yen one. I chose it because the package said something like 'Recommended for drawing!'

This was incredibly good, and it became a revolutionary encounter for me.

With the stylus in hand, my motivation skyrocketed,
and I thought, 'Let's try using a proper drawing app!'
so I installed an app called 'ibisPaint X'.

I was amazed, thinking, 'You can do this much for free...!?'

At first, I didn't know how to use it at all, and I felt like, 'Layers? What are those?', but
I realized it was the same as the LINE emoji guidelines,
and after reading the instructions many times, I understood it somewhat.

I started using it while thinking I would learn as I went along.

Then it was incredibly convenient, another revolution...!

Filling in, transparency, and size specification were all completed with this...!!!
Thank you for coming into my life.

I redrew the illustrations and submitted them again.

The review result is...!

It passed!!
It was a long road.

There were twists and turns, new encounters,
and many things happened, but it passed the review safely and is now ready to use.

It's just for my own satisfaction, but I think they turned out quite cute,
and I'm really happy with them.

I'd love for you to take a look. These are the marks of my battle.
I would be incredibly grateful if you bought them...

Compared to when I was drawing on paper and taking photos of it,
I've made a lot of progress in this short time...!
I've learned that when you take that first step, it's fun to see how various options branch out like tree limbs.

I hope this can be of some help to people who are thinking about making LINE emojis but don't know where to start.

But even if you dive in without knowing anything at all,
I think the process of figuring it out by trial and error is fun in its own right, so you don't even have to look at this! (Wait, what?)

In any case, I'm just glad I got it done🎶