Dog Character & Animation for Placelist App

Description: 2D dog character design and 12 Lottie animation states for Placelist, a Seoul-based travel app that received a Red Dot: Junior Award 2025. The character serves as a friendly AI guide across onboarding, in-app interactions, and notification touchpoints.
Category: Illustration Brand Illustration
Tools: Adobe Illustrator After Effects Figma

01 What Dog Character & Animation for Placelist App needed

Vacatio Inc. reached out to WOBL to design a 2D dog character and a set of Lottie animations for Placelist — a travel app that uses AI to deliver context-based location recommendations. The character needed to function as a friendly, approachable presence across multiple app touchpoints: onboarding illustrations, in-app guidance states, and push notification thumbnails. A key constraint was that the app's UI uses a predominantly white background, so the character needed to be designed with enough contrast and outline definition to remain readable at small sizes.

02 How the studio approached it

WOBL built the character through iterative sketching, refining the direction after the client shared references calling for a more playful, individual personality. Final design used a blue palette matching Placelist's brand color (#007AFF), with an outline treatment for visibility against the app's light UI. For animation, WOBL delivered 12 Lottie states covering emotional beats: relaxed, energetic, curious, alert, spinning/returning, calm-to-excited transitions, and confused/shy. Several used multi-phase motion, not simple loops. Delivery was iterative, simple states first, then complex ones, with progress videos for client review. Final files: Lottie JSON, AEP, and vector formats (AI, SVG) for developer handoff. - testing

03 What came out of it

Deliverables included three onboarding illustrations, the final character design, and 12 Lottie-ready animation files across all requested formats. Placelist later received a Red Dot: Junior Award 2025 in Brands & Communication Design (Lifestyle App category), recognizing the overall app experience — with the dog character serving as one of its visual touchpoints.