Character Rig + Pose Library + Rive Animation — Kids’ Sports App Mascot

We're building a sports app for kids ages 5–15. Our mascot — a blue fox named Scout — exists as finished artwork but will be refined before production. We need Scout rebuilt as a **layered, swappable vector rig**, then a full library of poses and animations built from it. Scout also stands in for players, appearing in team jerseys and sport-specific action poses. **We're hiring one person for both illustration and animation.** Not splitting this. The rig, the poses, and the motion are one system, and handing off between two people breaks it. A complete asset catalog with per-pose descriptions will be provided. --- ## Scope ### Phase 0 — Character development **This phase locks Scout's final appearance before anything is built from him.** It is the most important part of the project and should be approached as design work, not cleanup. Our current artwork is a starting point, not a brief. We want it interrogated: - **Proportion study for the audience.** Scout appears to children from age 5 to 15. Head-to-body ratio, eye size, limb weight, and stance all shift how young the character reads. We need this deliberately calibrated rather than inherited. - **Silhouette and small-scale legibility.** Scout renders at 40px in a top bar and full-screen in a takeover. He has to hold up at both. Ears, tail, and muzzle carry the silhouette — they may need reshaping. - **Range test.** Scout must convincingly slam-dunk, pitch, take a slap shot, coach from a clipboard, and encourage a child who just got a question wrong. If the current build can't do all of that expressively, propose the changes that let it. - **Appeal calibration.** Friendly and energetic without tipping into either babyish or aggressive. A five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old both have to want him around. **Deliverable: 3–4 distinct directions**, each shown as a turnaround plus two sample poses and one expression, so we can compare real range rather than a single front view. We then select one and iterate to a locked master before Phase 1 begins. Expect real back-and-forth here. Everything downstream is generated from whatever we lock, so we would rather spend time in this phase than discover a problem at pose 30. ### Phase 1 — Rig Rebuild as a nine-layer SVG with named, independently swappable layers: `tail` · `arm_back` · `body` · `kit` · `arm_front` · `head_base` · `muzzle` · `eyes_brows` · `prop`. Must support runtime swapping of kit, expression, and prop without re-authoring. ### Phase 2 — Components 5 sport kits · 8 expressions · 22 accessories · 4 jersey templates with recolorable zones. ### Phase 3 — Poses 50 total from the rig — 36 sport action poses across basketball, football, baseball and hockey (dunk, three-point, block, throw, catch, tackle, swing, windup, slap shot, goalie save) plus 14 general poses. ### Phase 4 — Animation 28 files — 8 core character (idle, greet, celebrate, coach, think, speak), 7 secondary, 12 player action loops, 1 universal idle overlay. --- ## Delivery **Static:** layered SVG, named layers, clean paths, no rasterized elements. **Animation:** **Rive (`.riv`) with runtime state machine.** Lottie accepted as alternative. **80KB max per file. Every animation needs a static fallback** — we support reduced motion. Working files required. These drop straight into the build. No exported video, no flattened files. --- ## You should have - Expert vector illustration and **character rigging for runtime layer swapping** - **Rive or Lottie animation**, authored for app runtime - **Prior work on comparable characters** — mascots, game characters, or app characters. Please show them. - Enough sports familiarity that poses read as credible Style is flat 2D vector. No gradients beyond simple two-stop, no texture. Must read at 120px and full screen. --- ## Hard constraints 1. No real team logos, wordmarks, or league marks. 2. No real player likenesses — Scout is always the figure. 3. Accessories are position-standard equipment only. If a fan could name the player from it, it's out. 4. Jerseys carry a city-name text slot only. 5. **All work original.** No stock, no traced reference, **no AI-generated assets.** --- ## Engagement Fixed price, milestone-based by phase. **Phases 0 and 1 are paid and gated.** We don't proceed past character lock, and we don't proceed past the rig until it demonstrably supports clean layer swapping. Everything downstream inherits both. --- ## To apply 1. Portfolio, plus **3–5 examples of comparable character work** — ideally including a character you developed or refined, not only executed 2. Have you built layered assets for runtime swapping? Briefly, how? 3. Rive or Lottie experience — an example if you have one 4. Fixed-price quote per phase, timeline for Phases 0–1 Reference the rig requirement — we're filtering on it. **One question:** looking at our nine-layer stack, is there anything you'd restructure, and why?