afspies/clawdmoji

ClawdMoji is a small art project that generates animated Slack emoji of Clawd, the crab mascot associated with Anthropic. Instead of drawing each emoji by hand in an image editor, everything is produced entirely with Python code and math, starting from a single screenshot of the original logo. The first step recovers the underlying pixel grid from that screenshot: a script isolates the crab's orange body by color, finds the edges of its silhouette, and works out the grid size the art was originally drawn on, twelve cells wide by eight cells tall. That grid becomes a single shared string of characters that every other script in the project imports, so Clawd looks identical across every emoji variant, whichever scene he appears in. From there, each folder in the project builds a different animated scene around that same base character. Examples described in the README include Clawd standing calmly in front of a burning room using a simulated fire effect, Clawd walking under a rainstorm with layered raindrops and cloud texture, and Clawd surfing down the face of a wave with foam, spray, and a rotating surfboard. A mariachi themed variant has him dancing in a sombrero while shaking maracas. Each animation is built by layering separately rendered pieces, such as background weather effects, the character itself, and foreground effects, then combining them into a looping GIF sized to fit Slack's emoji upload limits. A notable detail across the variants is that the loops are built so they repeat cleanly with no visible jump, using techniques like matching the frame count to the pattern's natural cycle length or picking a cut point where the animation matches its own starting frame. All outputs are 128 by 128 pixel images with transparent backgrounds. A live gallery site lets people preview the animated emoji and copy their Slack names, and a downloadable release package bundles them for upload. The project is released under the MIT license, and outside contributions of new variants are welcomed.