Portfolio creature · Design + code · 2026

How I
was made.

The creature who lives here has a story. I directed his appearance, worked out how he moves, and built his place in my portfolio with AI.

The ivory and blue portfolio creature, seated with his tail curled beside him
The current 2D creature. He lives in the rooms of this site.
My role
Creative direction, interaction design, review
Made with
AI-assisted illustration and code, Blender pose studies, authored 2D animation
Where he lives
The hero, projector room, and About drawer

01 · Character

Give him a life
inside the site.

I wanted a creature who feels like he belongs here: curious, a little mischievous, and comfortable enough to nest in a drawer. His actions connect the rooms of the portfolio.

I used AI-generated concepts to develop his appearance, then directed revisions to the silhouette, horns, ears, face, and tail. The illustrated look became the reference I kept returning to.

An early illustrated concept of the creature with branching horns, blue finlike ears, and a curled ivory tail
Early approved illustration · October 2026. Later anatomy decisions refined the tail; this source drawing stays preserved.

02 · Motion studies

Work out the body
before the gesture.

A seated drawing leaves questions unanswered. How does he turn around? Where do his paws land? How does the tail follow his body into a drawer?

We developed a Blender model and rig to explore those poses and points of contact. It helped make the movement concrete, but I preferred the warmth of the original illustrated creature.

I chose to return to drawn 2D, keeping Blender as a reference for pose and contact.

A three-quarter pixel render of the Blender creature model, used to study its body and pose
The Blender rig · Turn him all the way round and zoom in. An explored direction, rather than the final illustrated appearance.

03 · In the browser

Make his actions
part of the experience.

The final direction uses fixed 2D art and authored motion. He sits in the hero room, watches the projector, and climbs back into his drawer head first, with his tail following last.

The difficult part was keeping one character consistent across those actions while fitting the animation to real page states: opening, scrolling, resizing, and closing About. The implementation includes reduced-motion behavior and pauses work when a scene is hidden.

The portfolio hero room with Lucy Liu’s lit name and the creature seated on the stage
The creature in the portfolio’s hero room · Implementation capture, October 2026.

The frame archive

A lot happened
between these poses.

I kept the drawings, rendered frames, motion tests, and unused directions. They’re gathered into a dense archive of contact sheets, grouped by what I was working on.

Browse all his frames
A dense contact sheet of the creature’s newly rendered workshop idle

The collaboration

I set the direction.
AI helped me build it.

I decided what felt like him, chose between visual directions, and reviewed the results. AI tools helped generate concepts, develop the rig and animation code, and implement the browser behavior. These concept images are AI-assisted artwork, not drawings I made by hand.

The process involved keeping the parts that worked, naming what felt wrong, and revising the direction, even after building a 3D rig.