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

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!

⚡️ 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 ➔