What sparked it
Most of what I make is video. You press play and watch it happen.
Rive made me curious about motion that responds to you: an icon that comes alive under your cursor, a character that reacts to a click. I wanted to build things people could play with, and to hand developers a working animation instead of a video to recreate.
Bringing an icon set to life
The first course started small: a set of outline icons that sit quietly until you reach them. Hover over the star and it fills with color and glows. The scissors snip, the mailbox opens, the heart pops in pink.
Each icon is its own small piece of character animation, and all of them respond to the cursor. It was also the first time I learned the real structure of a state machine and how to build user-proof interactivity that can't be broken, so every icon holds up at rest, in motion and in between, no matter what the user does.
An interactive web page
The second course raised the stakes: a full web page for Cool Beans, a jelly bean brand, where the animation is the interface. A bean character reacts to the cursor, a jar fills up with beans, and the headline cycles through flavors, from cherry to pumpkin to sour apple.
This is where I learned how to create interactivity that enhances the design but doesn't take away from it. It's also where I learned to build responsive design with the state machine in control, so the page is easy to change if the parameters shift partway through a project.
Have a project in mind?
I'm available for freelance motion, UX/UI and video work, including:
- Explainer videos, software tutorials and brand sizzles that make complex ideas easy to follow
- Product and UI animation, including interactive web motion built with Lottie and Rive
- Animated ads and social media content, including short-form video I shoot and edit, and banner and media spot ads adapted across sizes and platforms
Tell me what you're making and what your timeline looks like!