To be safe I'll take the animations down for now and reach out to Disney directly - I'm not using the characters to promote my services but to decorate the content area. They are really just a small part of the idea I'm trying to convey in the article.
These animations fall under a non commercial transformative use context so I really doubt LucasFilm would have any issue. I like BB-8 and wanted to give this experimental design a go so animating him in different ways was exciting to me. Maybe the next few articles I'll use Porgs!
I agree that the Netflix experience can be a little annoying - but that's because we keep coming back to that show and navigation over and over.
The way these have been implemented for blog posts is more of a single use situation. That is, you are likely only going to hit this article once and never again.
The small moment you create at the top of your content - whether it be a banner image, video or animation - is pretty non intrusive to the experience imo.
I agree mixing any type of animation in a content area is jarring. But what I'm doing here is using the same sort of pattern people are comfortable with on the internet already.
I think every user expects some sort of introductory section at the top of a content area, whether it's just a title and preface or a banner/hero image to set the mood or peak interest.
Also let's not lose sight of the true purpose of the article - it's about a variety of techniques that may have nothing to do with animations and more about storytelling and scene composition of information to lead users into call to actions :)
I think a lot of folks here are suffering from flash PTSD from the early 2000's. I remember those days. I remember when a flash intro was blocking and cumbersome and slow. But I don't feel these animations are giving off the same vibe because:
1. They are non-blocking of both the loading phase and the content area. You can scroll right past them if you don't want to look because they are inline content elements. They are essentially "animated heros".
2. They load fast, actually less then the total size of some full screen hero images because it's a WebGL scene.
3. They are short and quaint - you might spend the same amount of time observing some small details in a hero image or banner.
4. They downscale to mobile without a quality loss.
I think like any other element in design, it's how it's executed... If back in the early 2000's flash was integrated in a less obtrusive way it might have been a better experience.