Story
Tia, our mini poodle, is a prized family member. Thus, it only felt right to make something for her (mostly for us though) over Mother's Day weekend: a 16×18 pixel sprite of Tia, fully animated with modes and background controls.
Tia and Tia Sprite
Sprite in Action
Each of Tia's behaviors, sitting, wagging, alert, sleeping, is built from a small library of base poses combined with its own motion timing, so the sprite feels alive without needing a unique frame for every state.
Three background options let Tia's sprite sit in different settings, adding a layer of customization to the app.
Learnings
While Poodle Sprite was purely a personal project, building it sharpened skills I use in product work: iterating on visual design, animation, and shipping a product from 0 to 1.
I spent many hours working with Claude Design to map out Tia's interactions, training the sprite to look and act like a dog. Videos of poodles moving on Youtube and reference of live pictures of Tia helped ensure the end behavior felt realistic and mimicked that of a poodle's. From there, I worked with Claude Code to get the sprite rendering properly, adjusting the background, feature placement, and usability to bring the vision to life. I chose to narrow down the states to the seven that looked the most natural animated.
Pose-to-state system behind Tia's behavior and color palette
Shipping the app took its own bit of work too. I tested across laptops, tablets, and phones to make sure the pixel art rendered well and stayed playable no matter how each family member opened the link.
Overall, building Poodle Sprite was a fun personal project, and a great way to sharpen my builder skills.