Tutorial

How I Used Rive to Build a Punchable Pixel Art Character for My Portfolio Site

by
Joey Korenman

Learn how to craft an interactive hero section for your portfolio using Rive.

In this comprehensive Rive tutorial, Joey demonstrates how to build an interactive hero section for a portfolio website featuring a pixel art character that tracks mouse movement and responds to clicks. The tutorial covers the entire workflow from creating pixel art assets using AI tools like Midjourney (with significant manual cleanup in Photoshop), to implementing complex interactive behaviors in Rive including:

  • Mouse tracking with hit boxes
  • Joystick controls for directional head movement
  • Nested solos for managing multiple character states
  • State machines with listeners and inputs for click events
  • Constraint-based animations
  • Advanced features like activation zones that control when the character starts tracking the mouse.

This is a mini-course all on its own, and is ideal for Rive artists looking for intermediate-level tips and tricks.

Grab the FREE project files and presets below!

The All-Access discount is SOLD OUT, but you can still get 25% off all individual courses! We’ve been quietly rolling out our new All-Access program, where you can get every course we make for one low price. It’s a crazy good deal even without this sale. But until Wednesday 12/4, you can get it for 25% off. For this sale we are opening up 100 spots. After those sell out, you’ll have to wait at least a few months until we open more. Don’t sleep on this deal. We expect it to sell out fast.

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Free Rive Project File and Presets

Snag the project file and follow along with this Rive tutorial.

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⚡️ Want to take your Rive skills to the next level? 

We are excited to release Rive Academy: Vol. 2, our next-level course for animators, UI artists, and developers who want to learn this powerful tool for interaction design. In volume 2, Joey Korenman will teach you to build and implement a fully interactive website hero section with multiple layers of interactions and is fully responsive.You’ll also learn how to use bones, constraints, nested events, and much more.

LEARN MORE