Indie Dev Journal #3

User interface improvements

This week, I focused on improving the UI for UV-Buddy. I realized that adding an AI insight was fun, but something was missing—showing just text felt a bit boring. So I decided to add animation, specifically animating the character to make the UI more engaging.

Animating the character and integrating it into the UI consumed all my time this week. Using AI to create the animation? That was actually the easy part. The real challenge was doing it without breaking the bank.

After testing several options, Midjourney gave me the best results for animated characters. Other AI tools were either too expensive or completely changed the character’s face. But then came the next hurdle: creating a transparent background. I tried multiple solutions, but they were all too costly and didn’t deliver great results.

That’s when I discovered ComfyUI—a node-based AI tool that runs locally. It gave me exactly the control I needed. The final step was optimizing the file size and making it iOS-ready, which meant converting everything to Lottie files.

It’s not the easiest workflow by any stretch. Getting there required a lot of patience and trial and error. But I finally cracked the code: I found the right file formats, figured out how to create Lottie files that aren’t too grainy, and successfully added them to the app.

Here is the result: