Rive Avatar Designer & Animator

Overview We're building a beautiful educational app and need an original, friendly animated avatar built in Rive. The avatar is the heart of the experience — it talks, listens, and reacts to the user, so it needs natural lip-sync, lively idle behavior, and clear listening/thinking states. We're looking for someone with a strong Rive portfolio to design the character and rig it for runtime control in our Flutter app. Scope of Work 1. Character Design - Design one original avatar — friendly and approachable, suitable for learners of various ages. - Provide 2–3 concept sketches for approval before finalizing. - Clean, modern, vector-friendly style (think high-quality educational mascot). - Deliver a character sheet (front + ¾ views, expression set). 2. Rive Rigging & Animation (single .riv file, organized with named State Machine inputs we can drive at runtime) a) Idle Animations - Subtle, natural idle loop: breathing, blinking, occasional micro-movements. - The avatar should feel alive — not just a moving head. Include gentle body, shoulder, and arm movement: small shifts in posture, an occasional arm gesture, a head tilt or glance around. - 2–3 idle variations that cycle naturally so it never looks frozen or repetitive. b) Listening State - A distinct, friendly animation that clearly signals to the user "I'm listening to you." - For example: the avatar leaning in toward the screen, turning an ear closer, making eye contact, a light attentive nod — something that reads instantly as active listening. - Smooth transitions in and out of idle. c) Thinking State - A short animation for when the avatar is processing/forming a response (e.g., eyes glance up, a thoughtful tilt). d) Speaking / Lip-Sync (most important) - Mouth shapes mapped to a standard viseme set so the avatar can lip-sync to speech driven by timed phoneme data we provide at runtime. - We want lip-sync that looks natural — the mouth shape set should cover the standard English visemes below. (If you recommend consolidating very similar shapes into fewer, well-blended visemes for smoother results, we're open to it — quality of the final lip-sync matters more than raw count.) - Vowels: AA, AE/AH, AO, EH, ER, IH/IY, OW, UH/UW - Consonants: B/M/P (closed lips), F/V (lip-to-teeth), TH (tongue-to-teeth), L, R, S/Z, SH/CH/J, T/D/N, K/G, W, Y - Rest / neutral (closed mouth) - Each viseme must be a single addressable state/input in the state machine so we can switch between them rapidly (every ~50–100ms) from timed data. - Blinks and subtle head/body motion should continue underneath speech (additive layer) so the avatar stays alive while talking. e) Expression Layer (nice-to-have) - Basic emotion states: neutral, happy, encouraging, surprised, confused — triggered by a state machine input. 3. Integration Requirements - Must work with the rive Flutter package (latest stable). - State machine inputs clearly named and documented (e.g., viseme, listening, thinking, expression). - Short README explaining each input and its expected values/ranges. - Verify smooth 60fps playback on mobile. Deliverables 1. Final .riv source + exported runtime file. 2. Character design sheet (PNG/SVG). 3. Viseme/mouth-shape reference (which input value = which shape). 4. README documenting all state machine inputs and how to trigger each animation. 5. Two revision rounds included. Optional Add-On — Room / Environment Illustration (Tell us if you also offer this, or we may hire separately.) We also want a beautiful illustrated room/apartment scene the avatar lives in — a cozy space with furniture, a wardrobe, and decoration that the app is themed around. Could be a Rive scene with a few interactive/animated elements, or layered illustration assets. If you do environment/background art, please mention it and share samples. Skills Required - Strong Rive portfolio (please share .riv samples or Rive Community links). - Character design + 2D animation experience. - Familiarity with viseme/phoneme-based lip-sync. - Bonus: Rive + Flutter integration experience; 2D environment/background illustration. Budget Fixed-price preferred — please include your bid and estimated hours. Open to milestone-based payment. To Apply 1. Portfolio with Rive-specific samples (links to .riv files or Rive Community profile). 2. Any prior lip-sync / viseme work. 3. Your proposed budget. 4. A short note on how you'd approach the viseme rig and the "alive" idle behavior.