Case Study / Splunk .conf18
The first digital build of Splunk's beloved mascot — a green-screen ride experience on the show floor, extended onto the general session screens.
Executive Producer — Jill Honig, Awesome Girl Productions
Walt Disney World Dolphin, Orlando · October 2–4, 2018
View the full case study (PDF) →01 / The Ask
Buttercup the Pony has been Splunk's community mascot since 2013 — a character the .conf crowd knows by name and treats as its own. She existed as a plush pony, stickers, and lore. She had never been animated.
For .conf18, Splunk wanted attendees to ride her. The activation: Ride Buttercup, a green-screen video-capture experience with social share on the 5th floor of the Dolphin. That meant creating the first digital version of the mascot — designed, colored, and animated from scratch — and getting it approved by the people who love her most.
The mascot IRL — plush Buttercup, reference for the first digital build
My Role — Executive Producer
The Scope
02 / The Experience
iPad kiosk running a custom Unity app captures attendee info, serves the release, and issues a QR code for conference points.
A green bench inside a 10×10 green-screen set, with a props table of cowboy hats, mustaches, and glasses.
Webcam capture swaps the green for a fast-looping cartoon landscape and the bench for the galloping digital Buttercup.
The processed GIF is framed, pushed to an 80" LCD loop on the floor, and emailed to the attendee to post.
User UI — welcome
Release + GDPR + signup
Attendant app — recording
QR — Buttercup points
03 / The Constraint
Two risks on one calendar. Creatively: a first-ever digitization of a fan-owned mascot, where getting her wrong reads instantly as off-brand. Operationally: an immovable load-in — final animation due September 26, team on a plane the 27th.
The Sept 17 color gate — original vs options A / B / C
This is what approval-sized looks like. One artifact, three options, one named decision-maker, one deadline — color chosen by 11am PT Monday, background out the same day, feedback by the 18th. Every review window was scheduled in advance, in writing, because the calendar had no room to absorb a single open loop.
04 / How It Got Made
A single shared deliverables sheet carried every asset — send date, feedback-by date, status, owner — across both companies. Ambiguity about who owed what disappeared into one document.
Rough sketch, background, color, then animation — four gates instead of one big reveal. A beloved mascot gets judged instantly; small gates made every judgment recoverable.
The Unity registration app, PC attendant app, and background substitution were built alongside the character — live and post-process substitution both prototyped, so the show had a fallback either way.
GDPR-reviewed release copy at registration, purpose-limited storage, records wiped once each session completed — privacy as a deliverable with a date, not an afterthought.
Concept render — green-screen set, 5th floor Dolphin
Floor plan — bench, webcam, prop table, attendant station
05 / Beyond the Booth
Once the character cleared approval, the digital Buttercup didn't stay in the booth. The build was extended into the general session walk-in and walk-out content — so the first digital Buttercup debuted twice: with riders on the 5th floor, and on the keynote screens in front of the full .conf18 audience as they entered and left every session. One approved character asset, amortized across the two highest-visibility surfaces at the conference.
Walk-in loop
General session — keynote screen
Walk-out loop — onsite
06 / The Outcome
The activation ran full conference hours, October 2–4. Attendees registered, saddled up, and left with a shareable GIF of themselves riding Buttercup — in their inbox before they left the floor, hashtagged #buttercupFTW. The character held up in front of the audience that judges her hardest: the Splunk community.
And the build set a precedent. Once Buttercup existed digitally, she kept evolving — by .conf19 she was a full CGI AR character attendees could become. (See: the Splunk .conf19 AR Filters case study.)
The Takeaway
Digitizing a beloved mascot for the first time is not an animation problem. It's an approvals problem.
Break the character into small, gated increments — sketch, background, color, motion — and schedule every feedback window before the work starts. Protect the gates, and the immovable deadline takes care of itself.