Paperdot

UI/UX design and prototyping of an animation and VFX pipeline tool.

I designed and prototyped Paperdot to streamline asset management and pipeline workflows, creating clean, modular, and visually integrated interfaces that minimize friction and let artists focus entirely on their creative work. The tool emphasizes intuitive navigation, efficient task flow, and flexibility to adapt to different production needs.

Client

Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

Industry

Animation / VFX

Duration

3 Months

Modern, Integrated Interface

Designing for Creative Efficiency

Paperdot was designed to provide a seamless, highly visual asset management experience. The interface emphasizes simplicity and clarity, ensuring artists can focus on creative tasks rather than navigating complex pipeline tools. Its modular design allows users to customize functionality according to their workflow, balancing accessibility for beginners with advanced options for power users.

A File Browser on Steroids

Rethinking Asset Management

As Technical Director, I aimed to transform traditional asset management into a highly visual, collaborative, and intuitive experience. Building on the idea of a “file browser on steroids,” I focused on combining simplicity with advanced features such as versioning, file history, metadata management, and customizable folder structures. My goal was to make complex pipelines feel seamless and integrated, rather than relying on external, disjointed tools.

The interface is designed with modularity in mind: casual users see only essential functions, while advanced users can add tools via drag-and-drop. Every folder and project can be personalized like a notebook, allowing for workflow templates, milestones, and project-specific structures. By reducing unnecessary complexity, Paperdot ensures that artists can focus on their creative tasks rather than navigating the pipeline itself.

Technical and Architectural Vision

Scalable, Cross-Platform Foundation

The prototype implemented a clean architecture in Dart/Flutter, establishing a robust, cross-platform foundation for future development. Supabase (PostgreSQL) was chosen to handle user management, authentication, and data persistence, providing a scalable backend capable of supporting complex workflows. Although the full system remains conceptual, the architecture was designed with modularity at its core, allowing individual features to be added, removed, or customized without affecting the overall system. This approach ensures that Paperdot could evolve into a production-ready asset manager, fully aligned with the needs of VFX and animation pipelines, supporting collaborative workflows, flexible project structures, and efficient asset tracking across multiple platforms.