This one's really special! I haven't dedicated this much time and effort to an emote in a long time. I had a lot of help from my bestie Nero, who helped me perfect the shape of the self-insert character being hugged, helped me stylize and shade my hair, and some other details. Done in Aseprite. I had to spend a while messing with the hue, saturation and brightness of the character being hugged, to make it more readable on Discord.

My main reference for this emote was this image.

There's a lot of work that went into this that isn't immediately obvious. Most hug emotes don't have what I need. The generic hug emote 🫂 is great over online communications, as it's easy for both people in the conversation to project themselves onto these blank-slate characters. But obviously, since I wanted to make a personalized one, one of the characters has to be me. Here's a furry hug sticker, with a generic "YCH" character. It's great, and has the creator/commissioner's fursona giving the hug, but I find it has two problems. First and foremost, seeing "YCH" written on the recipient takes you out of the immersion for just a moment - you have to stop and remember that YCH stands for your character here. The other problem is that not everyone I talk to is a furry, so they wouldn't be able to project onto the still very furry blank-slate character. Here's a more cutesy, soft-girl hug emote my friend uses. It isn't personalized - the girl could be any soft girl on Discord who wants to use it (which is a strength, if you want your emote to be used by many), but my main problem is with the cat. The cat being hugged is very cute, but not everyone receiving a hug online would immediately project themselves onto a little cat, especially because of the size difference between the cat and the girl. It takes a solid second or two, hypothetically, for someone seeing it for the first time to realize it's meant to be their friend sending them an internet hug.

I used the reference and pose that I did, for two reasons. One, my character is clearly visible, and clearly giving a hug, head and arms wrapped around the other. Two, the recipient is not only facing away from the viewer, but not the main focus of the image. There's no "YCH" text that breaks your immersion, if you're receiving a hug with this emote. It's immediately obvious what this blue character represents - a stand-in for anyone I want to hug - and said figure is featureless and not the focus of the image - the focus is on the hug, with the arms wrapped around, and the head nestled snugly over the shoulder.

All that is to say, I wanted my hug emote to evoke the feeling of receiving a hug, to whomever I send it to. What I've made here is, I believe, the best I could've done, considering all the elements I wanted, and problems I wanted to avoid.