Volunteer Team: Content Management Team
Volunteer Area of Interest: Video and Multimedia Production
Volunteer Availability: Virtual
Skills and Experience: Communications / Public Relations Animation and Motion Design
Tools: Adobe Suite / Adobe Creative Cloud
Rive motion designer volunteer opportunity at iLevelUP. Fully remote, unpaid work for eligible applicants in the United States. This opening is for the Rive Technical Motion Designer & Character Experience Engineer role.
Rive motion designer: remote volunteer opportunity
Give iLevelUP’s Trail Guides the expression, responsiveness, and clarity that help young people feel ready to explore.
Fully remote | Unpaid volunteer | United States
About iLevelUP
iLevelUP is a free, AI-powered, game-based learning experience being developed by Believe in Me to help young people explore education and career possibilities and build self-confidence. The product is in limited beta. The learner is the main character, and iLevelUP is the guide.
Rive motion designer role overview
The official role is Rive Technical Motion Designer & Character Experience Engineer. iLevelUP seeks a remote volunteer Rive motion designer to connect character animation with a working digital experience. You will shape how our Trail Guides greet learners, listen, respond, explain, celebrate progress, and recover when something goes wrong.
Our limited beta already includes animated characters connected to AI. This role will help standardize that foundation and bring additional characters through a reliable production process. Your work should make interactions easier to understand and more welcoming while keeping the learner in control.
What you will own
You own the character-motion system: reusable Rive assets, interaction states, runtime behavior, performance expectations, and clear handoffs. You will collaborate with illustration, narrative, product, accessibility, and engineering contributors. AI behavior and learning content remain shared decisions with their respective owners.
Rive motion designer responsibilities
- Audit existing character assets and interactions, then define a shared rigging, naming, versioning, and animation standard that preserves each Trail Guide's personality.
- Build Rive rigs, reusable components, animation blends, and state machines or data bindings for greeting, idle, listening, thinking, speaking, encouragement, error, and recovery states.
- Develop a speech-animation approach, including mouth shapes or visemes where appropriate, and coordinate timing with the application's audio and dialogue events.
- Connect character behavior to front-end events with engineers; document inputs, outputs, transitions, interruption handling, loading states, and cleanup.
- Make motion optional and respectful. Provide reduced-motion and static alternatives, preserve readable text, and avoid effects that distract from instructions or create unnecessary sensory load.
- Profile asset size, rendering cost, memory use, and responsiveness on mobile devices and slower connections. Establish practical budgets and test graceful fallbacks.
- Review expression and pacing with learning and UX contributors so animation communicates feedback without shaming, pressuring, or implying an exclusive emotional relationship with a learner.
- Deliver editable source files, runtime examples, acceptance criteria, and a concise production guide that future volunteers can use.
Early deliverables
- First 30 days: complete an asset and runtime audit, propose the motion standard, and demonstrate one representative character interaction.
- By 60 days: deliver an integrated character prototype with the core states, interruption handling, and reduced-motion behavior verified with the team.
- By 90 days: establish a repeatable character pipeline, performance checks, and prioritized production plan for the remaining Trail Guides.
Rive motion designer required qualifications
- A portfolio showing interactive character animation, Rive state machines, or comparable work connecting motion to real user interactions.
- Hands-on skill in Rive rigging and animation, plus the ability to explain the structure and behavior of your files.
- Understanding of timing, posing, expression, blending, and character consistency across an interaction.
- Enough JavaScript or TypeScript literacy to collaborate on runtime integration and diagnose animation-event problems.
- Ability to prototype quickly, accept critique, document decisions, and follow through in a remote team.
Rive motion designer helpful experience
- Experience with Rive web runtimes, React, speech-driven animation, viseme systems, or reusable character rigs.
- Experience designing for young people, accessibility, reduced motion, or devices with limited processing capacity.
How we work
Work with iLevelUP’s creative and engineering contributors in small, reviewable increments. Share source files and decisions through approved project tools, and resolve scope or brand questions before producing a large asset set.
Why volunteer with iLevelUP
- Contribute to a nonprofit education product at a stage when your decisions can shape the learner experience.
- Own a meaningful body of work and collaborate across education, design, engineering, and student support.
- Develop work samples and share approved contributions in your portfolio while respecting project and learner confidentiality.
Time commitment and location
Fully remote and unpaid, with flexible scheduling. Weekly availability, project milestones, and the duration of your commitment will be agreed during onboarding.
How to apply
Apply for the Rive Technical Motion Designer & Character Experience Engineer volunteer role. Use the Believe in Me volunteer application. Share your résumé or LinkedIn profile, relevant work samples, weekly availability, and why this role interests you. Share only authorized materials and remove personal, confidential, or proprietary information.
Include a Rive file, interactive demo, or short reel showing character behavior. Briefly explain one state machine or animation system you built, the problem it solved, and your contribution.
We welcome applicants from varied backgrounds and pathways. Demonstrated capability, judgment, and dependable collaboration matter more than a particular degree. If you need an accommodation for the application or interview process, contact us through iLevelUP’s contact page.
Role details
- Role: Rive Technical Motion Designer & Character Experience Engineer
- Program: iLevelUP, a Believe in Me initiative
- Employment type: Unpaid volunteer
- Workplace: Fully remote
- Applicant eligibility: United States
- Team: Content Management Team
- Company address: 107 Spring Street, 2nd Floor, Seattle, WA 98104
- Job ID: 743
Fully remote and unpaid, with flexible scheduling. Weekly availability, project milestones, and the duration of your commitment will be agreed during onboarding.