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Astha Dhami
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AI + Interaction Design

Astha Codex Pet

A personal animated desktop companion shaped by the creative modes I move through every day.

Final product: a waving Codex pet.

More from the archive

First ChatGPT-generated character direction.
Procreate self-doodle added to bring a human touch into the process.
Process and variation study across the pet's creative modes.
Technical build artifact: validated sprite frames.

Mini case study

How the companion came together

01

Process

I designed and built a small animated Codex pet based on my own creative modes: designer, researcher, developer, greeter, and celebrator. The process began with a first ChatGPT-generated character direction, then I added a doodle of myself in Procreate to bring a more human touch back into the work. That hand-drawn layer helped steer the pet away from a polished generic character and toward details that felt more like me: oversized glasses, soft doodle lines, pink cheeks, loose everyday clothing, and a warm facial expression. Because Codex pets run from a fixed sprite atlas, every idea had to work inside strict frame sizes, transparent backgrounds, and repeatable animation loops.

02

Ideation

I explored different Astha states that could reflect how I work: designing with color palettes, researching with notes and evidence cards, coding with a laptop, waving hello in multiple languages, and celebrating a small win. The process involved repeated visual QA: adjusting scale, removing wings, clearing cropped frames, refining bubble placement, testing light/dark color variants, and simplifying details that felt too busy at pet size.

03

Final Product

The final pet is a validated Codex v2 spritesheet with role-based animations, transparent backgrounds, native-script greeting bubbles, and refreshed preview GIFs. It feels personal, but also functional: a tiny interface companion that turns personality, workflow, and technical constraints into one cohesive animated system.

Archive notes

  • The project started with a first ChatGPT-generated character concept, then I added my own Procreate doodle to bring human touch and authorship into the process.
  • I treated the pet like a small design system: fixed states, repeatable loops, role colors, and consistent character details.
  • AI helped generate and iterate the visuals, while deterministic scripts handled cleanup, validation, and spritesheet packaging.
  • The final result balances playfulness with polish: expressive enough for a portfolio side project, but structured enough to run inside Codex.