The next day I was called in for a private meeting with my boss. Brian told me that he was thinking of using the balloon dog as the set up for an idea he had. He liked the design of the dog and said he wanted to do something separate from what we were already doing. Initially I was interned there to work on the Selfmade project but then he pitched to me the idea of having an app with the character I created. It would be an incredibly simple app, the user would take a photo and be able to have a selection of animations to choose from to include in their photos. The animations would all be of different actions the dog would make. In exchange for my services I would be given certain royalties on the app and a separate undisclosed payment, nothing is set though. I of course agreed to being a part of it and was told that I’d be working apart from the rest of the group, the entire project being only discussed between Brian, myself, and once we found one a programmer.

First thing I did was think of a name for the dog. We wanted something that could be either a boy or girls name. I had an entire list of names.

• Sam
• Mel
• Benny
• Jesse

to name a few, but ultimately chose the name Ace. My boss loved it and asked for me to start designing an app icon before moving forward with anymore animations. So I started sketching but I really only had one idea that I was sure would be perfect.

I had 3 designs in mind but only made the one I knew would work and it was decided it would be the one we’d use.