Cartoon Animal Characters for App

About the project

PROJECT: Character design for an iOS app — one dog, five poses ABOUT I'm building an iOS walking app. The user's step count is the dog's walk. The dog lives primarily on the iPhone home screen as a widget, and the character IS the product — it's the first thing anyone sees and the reason people will download it. I need one dog character, designed once, in five emotional states. THE CHARACTER - A dog. One breed, your recommendation welcome — something warm, rounded and approachable. Puppy proportions (large head relative to body, short stubby legs). - Personality: always fine, always eager. Never sad, sick, tired or pitiful. Even the "waiting" state reads as anticipation, not suffering. - Style: flat vector. Chunky rounded forms. Thick outer contour with lighter internal linework. Two-tone coat (a base colour with irregular darker patches) plus a cream underside running muzzle → chest → paws. Small fur-tuft notches in the silhouette at cheeks and chest. - Palette: 6–8 colours maximum, warm. - Explicitly NOT: pixel art, 3D, gradients, painterly rendering, thin delicate linework. THE FIVE POSES 1. CONTENT — sprawled flat, asleep, low and wide, eyes closed, tail flopped 2. PERKED — sitting upright in profile, alert, ears forward 3. READY — standing level, four legs planted, tail up 4. RESTLESS— head low, one front paw raised, rear slightly up, leash in mouth, about to move 5. WAITING — REAR VIEW, sitting, symmetric, facing away from viewer (as if looking at a door) Note pose 5 is a rear view and is effectively a separate drawing — it can't be derived from the side-view poses. That's intentional. HARD TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS These are non-negotiable and are the difference between usable and unusable: 1. SILHOUETTE TEST. Each pose must be identifiable when rendered as a solid black shape at 60x60 pixels. I will test this on delivery. Poses must differ by POSTURE and overall mass, not by small details. 2. READABILITY AT 60pt. The primary display size is a 169x169pt widget, and it appears as small as 60pt. No line thinner than ~2.5% of the character's height. No detail that disappears at that scale. 3. LAYERED VECTOR SOURCE. Figma or Illustrator. Every part on its own named layer: Head, Ear_Near, Ear_Far, Muzzle, Nose, Eye_L, Eye_R, Mouth, Body, BellyPatch, Leg_FrontNear, Leg_FrontFar, Leg_BackNear, Leg_BackFar, Tail, Leash No flattened groups, no merged shapes, no rasterised elements. 4. JOINT OVERLAP FOR RIGGING. This one is easy to miss and critical: limbs, ears, head and tail must extend INTO the body/skull by roughly 15% of their width, not sit flush against it. I will rotate these parts in code, and a flush join exposes a gap the moment anything moves. 5. EXPRESSION VARIANTS. As separate layers on the base character: - Eyes: open, closed (happy arc), wide - Mouths: neutral, open with tongue These get swapped in code. DELIVERABLES - Layered vector source files (.fig or .ai) — all five poses - SVG export of each pose and each individual part - PNG exports @1x/@2x/@3x of each pose - A one-page style guide: palette with hex values, line weight rules, construction/proportion notes - Silhouette proof sheet: all five poses as 60px black shapes NOT IN SCOPE (may commission separately later) - Animation or rigging - Additional breeds - Shop items, furniture, environment art - App UI RIGHTS Full copyright assignment on final delivery — this is my product's identity and I need to own it outright, including the right to modify, extend and use commercially without restriction. Please confirm you're comfortable with assignment rather than a license, and price accordingly. All work must be original, with no stock or third-party elements. PROCESS - Paid style test first: one pose (READY), fairly compensated, before committing to the full set - Then full commission with 2 revision rounds - Attached: my five reference silhouettes, and a style reference image (for FEEL ONLY — please do not reproduce it; I need an original character)

Skills required