It started in ChatGPT

I dropped in a screenshot of blob avatars and asked for shiny, Blender-style 3D versions. I wanted a reference for the tool I had in mind. The little glossy characters it returned were adorable. I asked ChatGPT to help me write a prompt for Astra, using Blobatar as the starting point.

Then Astra built the Blender models. I was amazed at how fast I went from a picture of flat blobs to 3D characters I could customize. I wanted to keep going, and built the app in that same Codex thread.

My favourite part was changing the UI

I asked Astra to use shadcn/ui and Tailwind, and it made the changes so fast. I could ask it to rearrange the editor or move a control and see the result moments later. I loved working like this. For frontend work, it’s my favourite GPT model I’ve used so far.

Some experiments didn’t work out. A few materials looked too similar, so I dropped them. The first Vercel deployment broke the bots and controls, which meant another round of debugging before anyone could play with it. We got it working, including the downloads.

Now you can give your bot shaggy fur, change its expression and watch it squish against a wall. I had so much fun making these little characters. The code is open source, and I’d love to see the bots you make with it.

We made a launch video too

I drew a storyboard with the mascot squeezing through “Introducing,” followed by a pile of bots and a short demo. We used my screen recording and animated the bots around it. One revision to add blinks and reactions when they landed, and we had the 32-second video below. I love the little pile of bots.

I built SquishBots on Blobatar by Alain and took inspiration for the interactions from Bloub by Jérémy Perret. Thank you both for sharing your work.