Vira Pogromska’s Post

One more exciting challenge and one more pleasant encounter with wonderful people. I love my job! :) My dream to take part in a project where characters have complete freedom of expression, rather than being limited to a pre-prepared set of a few phrases, has finally become a reality. Working in a team with an illustrator, developer Adam Dahan and our wonderful project coordinator Amy Martin, we created a personal assistant that sings, dances and, most importantly, can pronounce any AI-generated phrases, demonstrating perfect synchronisation with the spoken sounds. The animations were created for the Bosslife Investments, which is a fun platform translating the stock market for a new generation. For this project, I created several Rive state machines of varying complexity that can be fully controlled by the developer. I created animations of character appearance, greeting, and encouraging user actions. It was also necessary to create animations that would be shown to the user while waiting for certain software tasks to be completed. Here we were inspired by the famous popular dances from the Fortnight game. When our cute Crystal dances, it looks like a little girl learning in front of the TV to repeat the dance steps of adult dancers. And I am very happy that I was able to achieve such an effect. After all, the main task of this character and these animations is to convey serious and often boring information to users in a fun and entertaining way. Working on the lip synchronisation of the character, the illustrator and I created all the necessary states of lip, teeth and tongue positions, which I then included as separate animations in the state machine and handed it over to the developer to continue this work afterwards on their side. I also created an animation of the character magically appearing out of a crystal ball when a click event occurs on that object in the mobile app. Here is a link to this project on my client's web site: https://lnkd.in/ds9F4_VX

I find it very interesting to take on work tasks that are in one way or another related to other areas of my life. I've had parrots of various breeds for many years. So when clients asked me to create a parrot character for their mobile app and animate it in Rive I happily agreed. Thanks to my close acquaintance with these colourful beauties, I know that they are not just bright and mindless creatures. Parrots are quite intelligent, cunning and even crafty! All these qualities I tried to reflect in my character. My task in this project was to create four variants of parrots, which would correspond to the four levels of user's achievements. It was necessary to animate the flight of the bird, as well as the change in its behaviour when a Hover event occurs. During the character creation phase, I provided clients with a large number of parrot colour options. They chose the red-orange "phoenix" to illustrate the first level, and the "golden parrot" represents the highest, fourth level. The user's progression through the intermediate second and third levels should have been immediately apparent. It was decided to illustrate this by changing the colour of the plumage, starting with its outer layers. In the animation, the parrot's level change and reaction to the Hover event are implemented using variables and listeners of the Rive State Machine. I created the vector images with the Sketch app and the animations with the Rive app. Here are the links to my client's application: https://lnkd.in/d_BMV72r https://lnkd.in/dmhKdweQ

Today I’d like to show a couple of pages from the animated children's book Whale Tails. WhaleTails is one of ten books from the Animal Tails project (Chris Decoufle) . These wonderful creatures were created by David SanAngelo and then I animated them with Rive. https://lnkd.in/dNqRJyst

For this project, I created several paper sketches and vector images in the Sketch app. Then I created Rive animations for loading screen of Flutter application. Here is the animation for Face Recognition that was used as part of a larger animation for the Stock Market app.

The FeedTheFish game is designed in a fun cartoon style. So the gamers might escape their daily problems by immersing themselves in a bright and colourful fish realm. However, the game goal is also to provide the users with new information about the inhabitants of the undersea world, as well as to raise their consciousness of the environmental concerns caused by global ocean pollution. For the FeedTheFish game, I created all the characters, props assets, backgrounds and user interface. Working on the Cat, my task was to create a character that would be a personal assistant for FeedTheFish game users. Its purposes are to provide tips and advice, as well as to recognise and reward accomplishments. It also assigns tasks to the players. Furthermore, if the user makes a mistake, this companion gently warns him. That is why a nice, adorable, and trustworthy character was required. Also, this character is used as the "face" of the game: as the program icon, in the splash screen, and in promotional materials. I created a plenty of various Fish Characters for FeedTheFish game. For each of them, I came up with its own nature, mood and personality. Working on the Angler Fish was a true challenge for me. After all, it is most likely the ugliest creature on the planet. However, my goal was to keep the entire game in a cute cartoon aesthetic, immersing the players in a fun and colourful fish kingdom. The Cat: Based on the task at hand, I opted to create a charming, colourful kitten with wide, trusting eyes and an irresistible smile. The animation of the Cat's movements is calm and graceful. The character literally squints with delight at the prospect of interacting with the gamer! Is it even possible not to love it? The Angler Fish: It's not easy to force such a violent and repulsive being to look adorable and make the user want to feed it. But I think I handled it well. My Angler Fish appears to be a little goofy and inattentive. It can't actually survive without the player's assistance in finding food! The movement of the lantern is quite essential in this animation. Angler Fish uses it to light its way through the depths of the sea. This emphasis further brings player's attention to fish's helplessness, making its predatory and nasty nature less significant. The different emotional states of the fish (calm, angry, happy) are also further emphasised by changing the color of the lantern. The sad or angry reactions of the fish characters to the plastic rubbish in the water should raise people's attention to the environmental crisis of pollution in the world's oceans. My workflow was the same as usual: starting with a paper sketch, I went on to create vector images within Sketch app. Then, I continued my work in the Rive app in order to animate the characters' movements and emotions.

Control panel buttons animation created with Rive for iDoRecall.com project. https://lnkd.in/dChenRus

Rive animations for FeedTheFish game icons.

Tired Rickshaw pulling a wagon. Rive Animation. I admire the laconicism and expressive intensity of Japanese classical painting. So, I've created a variety of watercolours in this manner to feel the rules of this intriguing genre. But what happens if these static pictures suddenly came to life? How would their characters move, how would they feel, and what qualities would they show if I tried to breathe life into them? Looking for the answers, I decided to create the personal project: a tired Rickshaw pulling a wagon. I believe I did a pretty good job of expressing the characters' moods in this animation. By the way, I would like to say a special thanks to my sound effects artist for always helping my animations become even more alive :) I used classic walking cycle animation concepts to give life and realism to Rickshaw's movements and depict his exhaustion from his daily hard work. He finds it difficult to drag the wagon, so as he walks, he leans forward a lot, looking for a better balance. To generate a sense of weight, I slow his foot down to the final moment before it leaves the ground. To make the movement more dynamic, I smash the foot hard on the road at the end of the stride. To make the animation more lifelike, I also use residual movements of the clothing fabric and bobbing of the torso and head. The Girl's animation conveys her serenity and indifference to the poor Rickshaw's problems. She sways in rhythm with the wagon's movement and enjoys the beauty of the surrounding landscape. The Rickshaw jerks the wagon a little, which shows his efforts and tells the spectator that the road surface is uneven. The background animation enhances the sense of the dynamics of the characters' movements while also displaying their progress. For this project I've created: -) watercolour picture -) vector pictures of characters and background elements with the Sketch app -) characters and background scene animation with the Rive app To create this animation, I've chosen the Rive app because I have had a lot of positive experience with this application. I enjoy how the Rive app provides the animator with a wide range of features to work with, while maintaining a straightforward, user-friendly interface. Using Bones provides an intuitive and natural way to animate multiple connected parts, and the work with Constraints allows me to control the properties of an object through another target object. Inspired by old Japanese art style and Kubo cartoon art.

While working on this project, I created many animations with Rive for emoji, icons, emoji rains, and other UI element animations. I show some of them here. Emoji images were provided by the client.

Rive animations for personal assistant to motivate the elderly. Created for Jack Jagt and Social-Buddy This assignment interested me because of its goal: to support the elderly in their daily lives. The application of this social project should always be running on the mobile device and thus a virtual friend is always present in the person's life. Its purpose is to remind the person to perform daily routines and motivate them to live an active life. By the time I joined the project, the virtual assistant character and a few basic animations had already been created. My task was to transform the character in a way that would make him more cute and user friendly. The challenge, however, was that I needed to do this through minimal changes. The application was already in use by users, so the redesigned character had to be recognisable at a glance, its appearance should not create misunderstandings. I also had to change the logic of the existing State Machine, create new animations and vector objects for them. I solved the main task "to make the virtual assistant more cute" in two steps: 1. I used graphic possibilities to change the static image 2. I changed the animated behaviour of the character, its movements, making them more natural and less mechanical. At the first stage I worked with colours, replacing the main blue colour of the character with a brighter and more cheerful shade, as well as adding shadows. I also created new small facial elements, which in the animation stage allowed me to make the character's facial expressions more alive and natural. Finally, I introduced a complimentary colour to the main colour in the image, which helped to achieve balance and cheerfulness. Further shades of this complimentary colour I used in the creation of auxiliary objects of animation such as a cup, plate, toothbrush, book. In this way I kept the basic concept of the project and made the character cute and user friendly with minimal changes in graphics. In the next step, I used Rive app for the animation. Here I: -) modified the existing animations of the character falling asleep and waking up by changing the facial expressions and making them look more natural -) changed the wink animation -) simplified the logic of the existing state machine by removing unnecessary complications from it -) created new animations: eating, drinking, brushing teeth with classic and electric brushes, reading, and knocking -) changed the state machine so that it could control all the animations created I sincerely hope that this project will do a lot of good for people and I am very happy that I had the opportunity to be involved. Created with Sketch app and Rive app