About
Pyong (Poy-on-guh) is a red fox character most commonly used as an emoticon or avatar in instant messaging and forums. Similar to Tuzki, the character has spawned a collection of GIF animations conveying a wide range of emotions (as shown above).
Origin
The character was designed and uploaded March 2006 by DeviantART user tiggerfactory1, whose real name is Elisa Kwon2, a Korean illustrator from Sao Paulo, Brazil. As of May 2011, the only Pyong-related artwork that still remains on her user profile is “Dress Pyong Game”3, a flash animation game based on her red fox character.
Spread
Upon its arrival on DeviantART, the character quickly gained the favor of other illustrators in the community and soon enough, an official fan club page4 for Pyong the Red Fox was created by DeviantART user po-po-tan on March 16th, 2006.
Pyong also became a very popular character among users on instant messaging services like MSN67, where the character’s popularity jumped with its advent as a user avatar. A collection of 159 Pyong “Red Fox” smileys was uploaded by DeviantART user SweetyNikita8 on September 10th, 2007.
Papercraft Version
The character has since spread over to 4chan as well, particularly on /po/5 (papercraft & origami) board.
External References
1 DeviantART – tiggerfactory’s Profile
3 DeviantART – Dress Pyong Game
4 DeviantART – Pyong Fan Club
5 Papercraft & Origami Database – /po/ Archives
6 Anikaos – MSN Emoticons
7 MessenTools – Pyong Red Fox Families
8 DeviantART – 159 Pyong Red Fox Smilies