Project
N°008
Name
Threads Voxel Characters
Company
Threads
Date
2022-2024
Role
Character Design, 3D Modeling, Video Production
Availability
Live
About
Between September 2022 and present day, I created hundreds of voxel character avatars that are free for use within the Threads app. We believed that the experience of choosing a character at the start of account creation was a key moment of delight. It's a playful extension of our brand that allowed us to cater to different personalities while adding levity to a professional tool.
Self expression seemed to be missing in the world of remote work. So whether it's a straw hat pirate, an F1 driver, or a beloved video game character, the way we communicate across digital teams has evolved to better reflect our personalities.
Threads Voxel Characters
Every week for 18 consecutive months, I designed and released a brand new character on our rotating "workshop" platform. You can see previously released characters surrounding the scene, along with translucent crates designed to resemble packaging for vinyl blind box toys. Each voxel (volumetric pixel) avatar is handcrafted in Ephtracy's Magicavoxel, a free lightweight GPU-based voxel art editor and interactive path tracing renderer.
I initially created a set of avatars for each Threads employee as we sought to unify our brand and illustration style just before launching early access in October 2022.
They became immediately synonymous with the rest of our brand, so I sprinted to prepare an initial set of 30 additional avatars for use in Threads' character selector (profile photo picker).
As I continued to add new characters, it started to become apparent that pop culture would resonate for most people. Some are very clearly abstractions and stylized representations of people, video game characters, our favorite movies, and so much more.
Here you can see the character selection screen in the Threads app. They're rendered as transaprent PNG's to give people the ability to select their ideal background gradient.
