GOOD BOY STUDIOS
Overview
Pet Parade is a head-to-head photo competition app for pet owners. You upload your pet’s photo, it goes head-to-head against another pet, and the community votes. Winners climb the leaderboard and earn in-app currency for prizes.
Problem
Good Boy Studios needed a design partner that could handle UI, illustration, motion, and product thinking across iOS and Android. The app had to appeal to casual pet owners AND competitive players — two very different mindsets.
The main content is user-generated pet photos. The UI needed to get out of the way and let the photos breathe while still fitting voting mechanics, tournaments, and social features into a mobile-first experience.
Process
We started by looking at competitors — Dokonoko, PetTopia, other pet social apps. Most felt flat — too much UI chrome, not enough personality. We knew the app needed to feel playful without being childish.
We built the visual language around a dark charcoal canvas with amber, coral, and teal accents. The dark background makes pet photos pop — they’re the star of every screen. Cards, buttons, and badges use rounded squarcles to keep things friendly.
Solution
The core loop is voting. Two pet photos side by side, full-bleed, with a VS badge between them. Tap left or right to vote. Simple, fast, satisfying. Every interaction feeds into leaderboards, tournaments, and prize rewards.
The “Time for Treats” system let users send illustrated food items — shrimp, hot dogs, cupcakes — to other pets as a way to interact beyond voting. Each treat had its own illustration and animation.
We also produced a full library of stickers, photo overlays, tournament badges, and social media assets. The sticker pack alone had 40+ hand-drawn illustrations.
For user acquisition, we made motion graphics for Meta, TikTok, and programmatic ads. Short, punchy, loopable — designed to stop the scroll and drive installs.
Results
The app hit 100K downloads on Google Play and a 4.7-star rating from 20K+ reviews on iOS. Featured on the App Store in the ‘Apps We Love’ category.
Learnings
Dark mode was the right bet. Pet photos look better against dark backgrounds, and users spend more time in the app at night. We doubled down on motion early — every micro-interaction, every transition — and it paid off in retention.
Overview
PetStar lets you turn your pet into a singing pop star. Upload a photo, set eye and mouth position so the mouth syncs with the song, choose from different music styles, and share the video. The app uses a custom mouth animation rig that matches the beat and lyrics of each track.
Problem
The app had a fun hook but a lot of surface area. Onboarding, the core animation editor, the eCard system, video filters, the tech stack — each piece had its own complexity. The mouth sync needed to feel natural even with low-quality pet photos, and the editing flow had to work for people who’ve never touched video software.
Process
I started by designing the full app flow from onboarding through every screen. Built a prototype in Figma to validate the mouth-sync mechanic before writing any production code. The editor was the hardest piece — every control had to be obvious without instructions.
I also helped pick the tech stack. The goal was less friction between what I designed and what shipped. We chose React Native for the UI layer so we could move fast across platforms, with native modules for the camera and animation engine.
Beyond the app itself, I designed and animated the video filters users could apply after creating their PetStar video. Each filter had its own character — color grading, overlay effects, and transitions that matched the energy of each song.
Solution
The app flow: user takes or selects a forward-facing pet photo, manually places four markers (left eye, right eye, nose, mouth), picks a song, and the app generates a lip-sync video. The marker system was a deliberate tradeoff — AI auto-detection would’ve been faster but less reliable across the wild range of pet photos people upload.
The eCard system covered holidays and special occasions — Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year. Users could customize a greeting card with their pet’s face, add a pre-recorded message, and send it as a video.
Pet dress-up let users put glasses, hats, collars on their pet in the video. Pure fun, but drove huge engagement — people love accessorizing their pets.
The landing page was minimal but clear — login-gated, thin public-facing content, focused on driving app downloads.
Results
The app hit 4.2-4.8 stars across iOS and Android with roughly 5K Play reviews and great retention curves. Featured in multiple app store categories.
The PetStar app won the Google Play Store Award 2022 in the "Apps for Fun" category. See the collection →
Learnings
The manual marker placement was the biggest tradeoff. No AI auto-detection meant a higher-friction onboarding step. But it also meant the animation worked reliably on every pet photo — no edge cases, no failures. Users who completed onboarding stayed. If we rebuild, I’d add AI auto-detection as a default with manual refinement as a fallback. Best of both.