Looking for a Live2D artist — semi-realistic/painterly otter for a personal desktop companion app [Hiring]
Hey everyone,
I've been building a fully local AI companion called Pocket for the past few months. It runs entirely offline on my own machine — voice input, memory, personality, the works. The otter is its visual identity, and I'm at the point where I need the real model in place before I can keep building.
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WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR
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An original otter character designed in a semi-realistic, painterly style. Think warm lighting, soft visible fur texture, expressive and emotive eyes — something that feels like a creature that actually lives on your screen, not a flat mascot. I want it to feel a little like concept art brought to life.
For the rig:
• Full Live2D rig with .moc3 export, compatible with the Live2D Cubism SDK
• 9 expressions: neutral, happy, excited, thinking, surprised, concerned, sleepy, smug, sad
• Idle physics: breathing cycle, ear movement, tail sway, fur/hair physics
• Sized for a small transparent always-on-top desktop window (~300px tall, transparent background)
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ABOUT THE PROJECT
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Pocket lives in a small transparent Electron window on my desktop. It wanders around, reacts to what I'm saying with different expressions, shows a subtitle bubble when it responds, and uses a separate output panel for longer answers. All of the technical integration — the animation system, expression triggers, WebSocket bridge, physics handler — is already built and waiting for the real model.
The placeholder right now is an SVG. I need the .moc3 dropped in so I can stop building against a placeholder and start building against the real thing.
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A NOTE ON THE AI THING
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I want to be completely upfront: this project is an AI project. Pocket is powered by a locally-run language model (Llama, running on my own GPU — nothing cloud-based, nothing generative image AI).
Your character design and rig would be 100% your original artwork. I'm not using AI to generate the model, the concept, or any of the assets — I'm commissioning a real artist because I want real craft in this. I just think it's fair to say what the project is so there are no surprises.
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BUDGET + TIMELINE
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Open to quotes — I know good Live2D work takes time and skill, and I'd rather find the right artist than rush it. Please share your rates, approximate turnaround, and a link to your portfolio (especially any rigged work or models with physics).
Feel free to DM or comment. Happy to answer any questions about the technical side too.