$ROBINCAT
Origin archive

Origin of Robincats

Robincats started with an Instagram post, a Robinhood referrals page, and a bunch of tiny pixel cats moving around in the page canvas.

The spark was this Instagram post. From there, the referrals page showed the good stuff: Robinhood mascot cats built from separate frames, flowers, plants and movement states.

After inspecting the page, those pieces could be pulled apart and turned into a proper Robinhood Chain collection: Robincats.

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01 / spark

The post started it.

The Instagram post felt like a clue: small, public, and specific enough to chase. It pointed toward Robinhood’s own visual language instead of a random mascot invented from scratch.

02 / inspection

The page had layers.

The referrals page was not just a flat GIF. Inspection showed an HTML canvas scene assembled from separate drawing surfaces: characters, flowers, movement frames and decorative pieces.

03 / collection

The mascot.

The extracted Robinhood mascot frames became a structured collection about the original little cats: one Leader, fifteen followers, flowers, backgrounds and looped movement.

Source inventory

One Leader. Fifteen followers.

The Leader was documented with eleven source frames, including idle, blink, bow and walk variants. The follower cast contains Cat 1 through Cat 15, each with idle, walk-one and walk-two frames.

Leader idle frameIdle
Leader blink frameBlink
Leader bow frameBow
Leader small idle frameSmall idle
Leader small walk one frameSmall walk 1
Leader small walk two frameSmall walk 2
Leader walk one frameWalk 1
Leader walk two frameWalk 2
Leader idle bow frameIdle bow
Leader bow walk one fragmentBow walk 1
Leader bow walk two fragmentBow walk 2
Follower cast

Forty-five follower frames.

The fifteen follower cats all use the standard walk loop: idle, walk-one, idle, walk-two. Their outfits become trait values in the final collection.

IdleWalk 1Walk 2
Cat 01
Cat 1 idle
Cat 1 walk one
Cat 1 walk two
Cat 02
Cat 2 idle
Cat 2 walk one
Cat 2 walk two
Cat 03
Cat 3 idle
Cat 3 walk one
Cat 3 walk two
Cat 04
Cat 4 idle
Cat 4 walk one
Cat 4 walk two
Cat 05
Cat 5 idle
Cat 5 walk one
Cat 5 walk two
Cat 06
Cat 6 idle
Cat 6 walk one
Cat 6 walk two
Cat 07
Cat 7 idle
Cat 7 walk one
Cat 7 walk two
Cat 08
Cat 8 idle
Cat 8 walk one
Cat 8 walk two
Cat 09
Cat 9 idle
Cat 9 walk one
Cat 9 walk two
Cat 10
Cat 10 idle
Cat 10 walk one
Cat 10 walk two
Cat 11
Cat 11 idle
Cat 11 walk one
Cat 11 walk two
Cat 12
Cat 12 idle
Cat 12 walk one
Cat 12 walk two
Cat 13
Cat 13 idle
Cat 13 walk one
Cat 13 walk two
Cat 14
Cat 14 idle
Cat 14 walk one
Cat 14 walk two
Cat 15
Cat 15 idle
Cat 15 walk one
Cat 15 walk two
Animation system

Six animation traits, four displayed frames.

Each finished GIF is 1000 by 1000 pixels. Every loop has four displayed frames, advances every 200 milliseconds, and repeats every 800 milliseconds.

Bow pose
Bow pose frame one1. Bow
Bow pose frame two2. Bow
Bow pose frame three3. Bow
Bow pose frame four4. Bow
Small walk
Small walk idle frame1. Small idle
Small walk frame one2. Small walk 1
Small walk idle repeat3. Small idle
Small walk frame two4. Small walk 2
Walk
Follower walk idle frame1. Idle
Follower walk frame one2. Walk 1
Follower walk idle repeat3. Idle
Follower walk frame two4. Walk 2
Blink
Blink idle frame1. Idle
Blink closed-eye frame2. Blink
Blink idle repeat3. Idle
Blink closed-eye repeat4. Blink
Bow walk
Bow walk idle bow frame1. Idle bow
Bow walk fragment one2. Bow walk 1
Bow walk idle bow repeat3. Idle bow
Bow walk fragment two4. Bow walk 2
Classic walk
Classic walk idle frame1. Idle
Classic walk frame one2. Walk 1
Classic walk idle repeat3. Idle
Classic walk frame two4. Walk 2
Bow pose animation example

Bow pose

Example #1

Small walk animation example

Small walk

Example #2

Walk animation example

Walk

Example #3

Blink animation example

Blink

Example #11

Bow walk animation example

Bow walk

Example #12

Classic walk animation example

Classic walk

Example #23

The odd one

Why Bow Walk looks strange.

Bow Walk is supposed to look strange. During extraction, the idle-bow frame appeared as a complete back-facing Leader, while walk-bow-one and walk-bow-two contained only a few opaque pixels. They behave more like sparse motion fragments than full sprites.

Instead of repairing it into something invented, the odd loop was preserved. It is the visible fossil of the way the source material was actually found.

Background

Nine quiet stages.

Black, Navy, Slate, Moss, Wine, Plum, Petrol, Midnight and Indigo were chosen as dark fields that keep attention on the pixel character. The editor grid was excluded from the final collection.

Black#06080b
Navy#09111d
Slate#15191e
Moss#111813
Wine#1a1015
Plum#17101c
Petrol#08191a
Midnight#0c0d1b
Indigo#101426
Flower

Five flowers, plus none.

Daisy, Sunflower, Tulip, Rose and Bellflower can appear to the left of the character. None is a deliberate sixth Flower trait, not a missing asset.

Daisy flowerDaisy
SunflowerSunflower
TulipTulip
RoseRose
BellflowerBellflower
NoneNo flower trait
Collection math

20 × 9 × 6 = 1,080.

Five Leader animation states plus fifteen follower Walk states create twenty character-animation states. Crossing those with nine backgrounds and six flower values produces exactly 1,080 final combinations.

Every combination appears once. The final build contains 1,080 GIFs, 1,080 metadata files, 1,080 unique trait signatures and 1,080 unique GIF hashes.