The first large-scale exhibition featuring the characters of the popular mobile phone application LINE is to open today at the National Taiwan Science Education Center in Taipei’s Shilin District (士林), offering the public a glimpse into the creation process of the app’s characters that have contributed greatly to its global success.
LINE is a free messaging app developed by NHN Japan, the Japanese unit of South Korea’s NHN.
The application has accumulated more than 300 million users worldwide since it was first released for public use in June 2011, including 17 million users in Taiwan, where it has been recognized as the most commonly used communication application.
Photo: CNA
Titled “Here We Are in Taipei: Line Friends,” the exhibition is to run until April 27 and is divided into different sections.
The first section is located next to the entrance and features more than 50 life-size figures of all the LINE characters and their profile information, including Brown, Cony, Moon, James, Jessica, Sally, Boss, Edward and Leonard.
The second section, named “The Art of Line,” showcases about 70 design sketches of the characters that have never been made public before.
There are also drawings of Brown and Cony posing as the movie Titanic’s main characters, Jack and Rose, and of a travel-themed sticker set that shows the characters traveling to Taipei 101, Japan’s Tokyo Tower, a South African “prairie” and Thailand.
Another highlight of the exhibition is a 4m high balloon depicting Brown, one of the app’s most popular characters.
Gold Media Group’s event department chief operating officer Charles Lee (李佳諭) said the group paid millions of New Taiwan dollars in royalties to host the exhibition, which was jointly designed by the group and NHN Corp.
“The souvenir store inside the exhibition is the world’s largest and sells as many as 400 different kinds of products, including macarons printed with LINE characters,” Lee said.
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