Thinking Like a Character Designer
How tall is Sponge Bob Squarepants? If you’re expecting an answer in inches, you’re not thinking like a character designer. Turns out, Mr. Squarepants is one and one half of his own heads tall. And if you’re looking to reproduce Homer Simpson accurately, you’ll need to make sure his head is six of his own eyeballs tall from the bottom of his shirt collar to the tip of his (two and only two) strands of hair.
Consistent, repeatable rules like these govern the design of all the characters you come across—and ImmyBot, our own lovable mascot, is no exception. How long is ImmyBot’s antenna? How wide is ImmyBot’s chasis? Are ImmyBot’s fingers tiny spherical nubs, or fully-realized digits capable of, you know, holding something?
The answers to those questions are the result of real, actual humans spending time thinking about questions like, “what color is a robot’s tongue?” And also, much like how the Simpsons from season one differ heavily from their modern design, ImmyBot has changed with the times, reflecting the growth of both Immense Networks and ImmyBot itself.
So how did we get to current ImmyBot?
“It’s Gotta Be a Robot”
The original ImmyBot sketch circa 2011.
Pinning down precisely why a primordial ImmyBot was created in the first place is somewhat dubious as all we have to go by are the memories of those who were there. And honestly, a lot has happened in the interim. Just ask Jason Cross, ImmyBot’s Director of Digital UX Strategy and the very first hire at Immense Networks. By his recollection, ImmyBot’s first forms date back to approximately 2011.
“I remember us sitting around talking about we needed something. Somebody at some point came up with, ‘It’s gotta be a robot,’ and then we started playing with it,” Cross said.
Those iterations resulted in a pixelated ImmyBot that would’ve felt at home on the video game consoles and home computers of the late ‘80s. And in fact, this version of ImmyBot was used on the wallpaper for an in-house arcade machine built by Immense Networks staff and constructed from parts purchased from an early foray into Bitcoin mining. But ImmyBot was always intended for more than an internal mascot.
“We always wanted to create something, to create a tool for other IT companies,” Cross said, “and we knew we wanted this robot character to be a part of it, to be like the public facing mascot of it, whatever it was gonna be.”
By Cross’ recollection, ImmyBot was initially used for one of two things: a time tracking app called “Timeinator” that integrated with Connectwise tickets, and a web application called InManage.
“Timeinator was this app that we wrote that would sit on the desktop,” Cross said. “It would let you more easily track your time and attach it to a ticket that you were working on. And I believe Immy was created for that or at least used for that for the little tray icon.”
InManage was a web application that Cross remembers as taking the idea of Timeinator and running with it.
“I think we were trying to rebuild a ticketing system of our own that Timeinator would ultimately talk to,” Cross said, “but ImmyBot the robot just kind of became the mascot of it all.”
Christian Bankester, principal solution architect at ImmyBot (and fourth dev hired at Immense Networks), was also there in those early days. He agrees that the first uses for ImmyBot were likely internal, though he remembers the character used for splash screens and 404 screens as well.
“I had first used it on our internal GitLab or maybe Bitbucket when we switched over to that,” Bankester said. “I have always been partial to the original 8-bit version of [ImmyBot] just because there’s so much detail in there with so few actual pixels, you know?”
ImmyBot Sheds Its Pixelated Past
By 2015, Jason Cross had gained responsibility for Immense Networks’ marketing efforts. But his time was coming to an end as opportunities that would take his talents elsewhere (at least temporarily) proved too tempting to ignore.
In the interim, an external marketing firm would press on with reworked marketing, a shiny, new website, and a reimagining of a certain robotic mascot.
A design breakdown of “Classic” ImmyBot.
This new ImmyBot ditched its pixelated roots for a more cartoony take with squat features and spheroid fingers. His screen remained intact, though its aspect ratio shifted to more of a 16:9 and much less of a 4:3. And if you thought this version of ImmyBot received a sass upgrade, you’d be correct. One of the most beloved iterations of this ImmyBot featured a pair of meme-fresh “deal with it” glasses. Both that image of ImmyBot and the accompanying glasses would become a mainstay of ImmyBot merch for years to come at industry events.
“The main thing that people like about the merch is those glasses,” Bankester said. “People go nuts for those.” Not to mention stickers, pins, USB drives with removable legs and heads (for USB C and USB 2.0 respectively) stress-reducing squeezable desk toys, an army of T-shirts, and a scant few and heavily sought-after button downs.
Various pieces of ImmyBot merch handed out at MSP industry events.
Between 2015 and 2025, ImmyBot the character sustained a prolonged merch-splosion in step and intensity with the company itself. ImmyBot became a fully realized platform and spun off from Immense Networks into a separate business. Together with the visual appeal of a cute robot mascot, ImmyBot Creator and CEO Darren Kattan and Chief Community & Ecosystems Officer Tara Rummer spread the good word of IT automation at MSP industry events, Discord chats, and no shortage of video calls.
Immy Upgraded
Jason Cross returned in 2024, this time to Immybot proper, not Immense Networks. And the company he rediscovered was one that enjoyed nine years of grow into both an automation platform and a prosperous business.
“[ImmyBot’s] resonating with a lot of customers and a lot of people think of it as this thing that helps them in their life, in their business, and all this kind of stuff. But I don’t feel like what we had at that moment on the website, in the app, really reflected the maturity of the business and just how capable the product actually is,” Cross said. “We wanted a way to represent just how capable ImmyBot is as a product through the mascot character.”
The job of creating a new Immybot in line with the company’s new level of maturity fell to ImmyBot Senior Manager of Digital UX Strategy Nicholas Tilley, a recent hire on Jason Cross’ team.
“When I came on, one of my first things to do was a brand audit, which was to look at how Immy was represented across different media channels,” Tilley said. “And it was so different. Like it would be different color buttons, there’d be different logos, there’d be different ImmyBot characters wherever you looked. We wanted it to look polished and refined.”
Consistency of design was one problem, but Cross and Tilley also held aspirations that a new iteration of ImmyBot would also be able to do more like emote more effectively and hold things with actual fingers.
“We really needed it to look the same, but to be able to show different emotions for what it’s doing,” Tilley said. “So, kind of the way his mouth was or his eyes were or his hands were,…would they allow me to show that expression or would that be something that kind of blocked that idea? Would he be limited in his movement and expression and emotions if we stayed with the current Immy? And then what would be an improvement?’
To help tackle these big questions Cross and Tilley called upon Rodney Brunet, a professional character designer and animator who spent years in the film industry working on projects ranging from Illumination’s Minions to Troublemaker Studios’ Predators.
“I think about what the character could do in the future and how it could be animated ‘cause, you know, I’m a traditionally trained animator.” Brunet said. “In animation terms…I think a clear silhouette is the most important thing. The character could be a silhouette, black and white, and we know it’s Immy.”
With Brunet’s help, Tilley finalized a character sheet for the updated ImmyBot. A character sheet is a guide to help enforce a character’s design no matter the medium. Those rules about how tall SpongeBob is or how many eyeballs tall Homer Simpson’s head is? Those rules weren’t merely written down for posterity; they were added onto character sheets so that anyone could have a look and reproduce those characters accurately.
“You know what the back view looks like. You know what their proportions look like, and so you can’t really break those rules once you establish them, because you have, in a sense, a bible,” Brunet said.
A breakdown of all the design decisions that went into ImmyBot 3.0.
Modern ImmyBot features a slimmer body with longer, well-proportioned limbs and more human hands. His outline maintains a consistent line weight and special care has been spent to give him a sense of depth through subtle dark hues of gray. And if you want to fully appreciate this new iteration of Immy compared to the previous one, Tilley suggests you take a good look at his eyes. Gone are the old eyelids that covered up his eyes and appeared to Tilley as though “they weren’t quite humanoid.” In their place are soft, approachable eyes capable of a wide range of emotions.
“There’s a rule of design that, you know, if something looks good, then it’s perceived as easier to use,” Tilley said. “I wanted to bring that to the robot to make the robot look more friendly, and then the app might also seem more approachable and friendly.”
ImmyBot’s Big Debut
Nicholas Tilley at IT Nation Connect in 2025.
At IT Nation Connect 2025, modern ImmyBot made his swag debut direct from the ImmyBot booth. And though a few booths down they were auctioning off Lego Star Wars sets, it wasn’t long before the entire first wave of ImmyBot swag made it into the hands of community; both to Immy devotees and the uninitiated alike.
Nicholas Tilley was there, fielding questions and handing out T-shirts with his design printed on them.
“Seeing it in print and seeing it on stickers…and then talking to people at the booth and talking to actual real-world users who have been Immy care customers for years or who are just coming into it but know the old Immy, I mean, the feedback was really strong,” Tilley said.
And yet there is one nod that may mean the most to Nicholas Tilley: that of his 7-year-old son. “When I showed him what it was and what it could be, he really liked it and that was a pretty good seal of approval,” Tilley said.
