Teaching my first animation workshop at the Ozark Media Arts Festival was a rewarding way to share a few lessons I've learned while creating and developing BizarreBeasts.

The 16th Annual Ozark Media Arts Festival brought together the next generation of storytellers and creators from across Arkansas, hosting over 800 students from 40 participating schools, 185 competing teams across 13 competitions, and 23 workshops delivering 60 hours of hands-on industry training.

The Shiloh Museum was packed with high school media and arts students from across Northwest Arkansas, and the room was buzzing with energy, great questions, and aspiring animators and artists learning the craft, many for the first time.

During the event, I had two back-to-back sessions, so I split the morning into two distinct parts:

1. How a hand-drawn illustration becomes a character that moves while still keeping the human-made appearance.

2. How to develop a creative practice you can build on with your artwork.

Every BizarreBeasts character starts as a drawing on paper or my iPad. The entire first session focused on one central question: How do you make that drawing move without losing the hand-drawn feel?

We walked through the pipeline step by step:

1. Parts & Hierarchy: Breaking a character illustration into distinct parts.

2. Bones & Pivots: Setting the exact pins every limb and joint turns around.

3. Clipping: How an eye is constructed, clipping the iris and pupil inside the eye white so the character can look around without ever breaking out of bounds.

Then we talked tools. I build the custom software my artwork needs, using AI (Claude) as my coding co-pilot. I describe what the art requires, we write and refine the code together, and I test it against my drawings until it feels right.

One rule I stated clearly in the room: AI is a tool-building apparatus to expand how I use my work, never generative for creating artwork.

Then we went live in Character Studio. I posed Hans by his pivots, moved his eyes around, swapped props in his hand with a single click, and typed a line so his mouth moved in sync with the text. Later in the session, we played a real recorded take so the room could hear and see the difference between automated letter shapes and a live voice performance.

Live Character Studio demonstration showing Hans rigged on screen.

🛠️ Try it yourself: If you were in the session or want to test the workflow, the Rig Sheet is free to download at bizarrebeasts.io/rig. Map your character, name the parts, pick your mouth shapes, and start drawing.

• "Mouth shapes: what's the easiest way to mesh them together?"

  Draw every mouth shape on the exact same canvas in the exact same position, each on its own layer. Keep the top lip and teeth steady, and let the jaw do the moving. If the base drawings line up, everything drops into place cleanly.

• "Does any of this apply to 3D, like Blender or Maya?"

  Yes, the fundamental principles are identical. 3D simply adds a Z-axis, meaning you have to think carefully about how every component behaves when a character turns in space.

• "What if I draw every frame by hand?"

  Different approach, same core idea. Build a reusable library of parts that maintain consistency across the character. Speed matters if you want to turn art into a long-term, scalable practice.

• "What did you use to make your website?"

  Claude, with every visual piece, including the font, illustrated by hand. The exact same process I used to create my games and custom animation software.

The second session focused on what happens after the artwork and technical craft is built. I shared the Make, Anchor, Play, Spread, Belong framework that guides our studio operations:

1. Make: The work itself, the project you would happily create on a Saturday for free.

2. Anchor: A digital home you own (your site or page) where no platform can delete your work or alter the rules.

3. Play: Give people a way to interact with your art, not just view it. (The whole room pulled out their phones to test All Cooped Up: The Game!)

4. Spread: Create assets people actively want to share because they are funny, useful, or personal.

5. Belong: Step outside the studio. Show up, meet people, and build genuine community around the work.

These are not steps you finish. They are disciplines you keep practicing as the work grows. During the process of creating BizarreBeasts, these five pillars have become the foundation of my work, and now my production studio.

To close out the workshop, we mapped one live. A student who wants to launch their own animated show volunteered, and we built their Blueprint together as a room. My core advice: Start by building simple games. A game is essentially animation with choices. It teaches you character movement, helps refine your visual style, and begins gathering the audience that will follow your work. That is the exact path BizarreBeasts took: the games came first, and the animated series grew out of what building games taught me.

📋 Map your project: The Creator's Playbook Blueprint is free to download at bizarrebeasts.io/playbook.

Northwest Arkansas has an incredible creative scene taking shape, and these students are a huge part of where it goes next. BizarreBeasts is a hand-illustrated universe built right here, now spanning a ten-episode animated series coming to DCP+, browser games, and a kids platform. Walking a room of young artists through how it is made, and hearing what they want to create, was a new way for me to engage my artwork with the community on a whole new level.

Thank you to the entire team at OMAF for having me, and to the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History for hosting the session!

Thanks to Kate Yarter for helping me during the workshop and for taking all the photos and videos!

Go BIZARRE! 👹

I'm the artist, animator, and creator behind BizarreBeasts ($BB), creating a universe where art and Web3 technology converge. This is where everything I am intersects: a lifelong artist captivated by darkly humorous art, a creative entrepreneur, a self-taught builder who coded 13 original games and a Web3 app, a musician performing original soundtracks, and a true BIZARRE believer in decentralized creativity.

This project was born from a vision of what's possible when an artist fully owns their creative universe, exploring the opportunities and economies that Web3 enables to build a legacy of creativity and freedom for myself and the BizarreBeasts community.

In early 2026, I walked away from a six-figure corporate position to create BizarreBeasts full-time and moved the studio to Bentonville, Arkansas. BizarreBeasts is an Arts3 Foundation A3 Startup Award recipient, earning $100K in funding for a ten-episode animated series currently in production, which will premiere on DCP+ at the platform's launch this fall as part of its opening slate. DCP+ is the streaming platform empowering independent creators from Decentralized Pictures.

My animation "All Cooped Up" was selected for Our Art 2026 at the Alexander Gallery, presented by Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, one of 102 works chosen from the 659 submitted by 371 artists, on view September 25 through December 20.

For more on my transition to building BizarreBeasts full-time, see my previous update: Going Bizarre Full-Time!

Learn more about me or see the paintings, statement, and CV at dylanyarter.com.

BizarreBeasts is a hand-illustrated world of bizarre and funny characters I create from my studio in Bentonville, Arkansas. It started as ink drawings and paintings and has grown into an animated series, made with my wife, Kate, and coming to DCP+ with the support of the A3 Startup Award from the Arts3 Foundation, administered by Decentralized Pictures. There are also 13 original games, played more than 270,000+ times, and a kids' platform. Every character is drawn by hand.

BizarreBeasts Animated Series Coming Soon, Exclusively to DCP+!

Click here to visit the official BizarreBeasts website, games, and artwork.

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Token info: ($BB; CA: 0x0520bf1d3cEE163407aDA79109333aB1599b4004).

Disclaimer: This article is a marketing piece created to share information about the BizarreBeasts IP and onchain entertainment project. It is not financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.