It all really started with this design. We knew the moment we saw Spy x Family that Anya would be the star. Her pink hair, her cute and petite demeanor, and those facial expressions.
We really wanted to capture Anya's essence in an all-in-one piece and decided to do as many of her manga expressions as possible. We added the background layer after a sample print run and decided there was too much negative white-space. We have a couple of back-end iterations that would make for great alternative arts, but eventually settled for what you see today.
While we really like the background we chose, we thought it also just made the most sense -- we wanted to convey the notion that Anya had a hand in making it as well: the "messy" brushstrokes, and the heart motif.