Cartoon Animal Characters for App

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)