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!
Have you talked to your lawyer about that? Fair use is a lot more limited than many people believe, and marketing for a design agency certainly strikes me as commercial use.
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.