Mobile Product Motion
Rive Workflows for Character Animation and Data Binding
Role
Product Motion Designer
TOOLS
After Effects, Rive
SKILLS
State Machine Design, Data Binding, Character & UI Animation
Initially, I was brought on to bring Professor T. Panda to life through engaging interactive character animation on their website homepage. From there my work with EZ Test Prep expanded into revamping their UI and animation of the quiz results end screen using data binding in Rive, working collaboratively with developers to hand off necessary Rive input information for Runtime, as well as more animations of Prof. T. Panda for paywalls, social media, and app store graphics.
Loveable sardonic mascot comes to life
EZ Prep hired me to animate Prof. Panda, but I made him interactive! After pitching Rive’s capabilities to the team, we decided to feature him on the webpage with idle, button hover, and button click animations. Simply mousing over the button pulls him away from his studies and he dares you to click with his classic sardonic personality. If you mouse away, he’ll grumpily return to his studies, but if you click on the button, he’ll cheer you on as he does all his students.
Data Driven Quiz Results Page
EZ Prep was looking to refresh their quiz results page and I was tasked with creating a reveal animation with input fields for quiz data and a color blend tied to the percentage of correct answers. Additionally, there’s an XP bar that fills according to a varied max XP per level and I revised the project to store max XPs, level names, and the associated medal color depending on a single level input. Other conditional cases include a percent average score change that changes color depending on positive/negative values, smaller type size for 1000+ questions/quizzes completed, and a +XX XP position change for an XP bar with minimal percent fill.
Another request was to implement a tap to speed up the animation, and instead of simply speeding up the entire animation, I wanted to retain control of the timing of some detail animations while moving the larger elements faster. To achieve this, I split the meter and bottom two boxes into separate components, data bound those playback speeds, and signaled when to begin their animations via triggers in a timeline, reducing the time between trigger signals if the screen was tapped at any point.
Study Anywhere, Anytime
For the app paywall banner, I took a raster AI concept of Prof. Panda at the beach and recreated it in Rive matching the softer gradients and keeping the mascot stylized according to EZ Test Prep’s brand standards. I animated loops of different lengths for the umbrella, waves, and Prof. Panda in order to create a natural scene with a less obvious repeat. (This is unfortunately not the case in the following video as video can’t achieve the same kind of subtle loop as a Rive file without additional length).
DESIGNER
Ian Feen