Teachers Pet Character Avatar

AutoBridge Systems / Teachers Pet / 2025

A cosmic guide that reacts.

My role: Rive character and UI animation, illustration, runtime integration

Delivered: A cosmic-themed Rive character system for Teachers Pet, a Rive UI button set (audio, capsule, chat, gear and star buttons), and a nebula intro sequence rendered in After Effects

Tools: Rive, After Effects, Illustrator

The brief

Teachers Pet is an educational platform from AutoBridge Systems. I worked on it from 2 April to 16 October 2025: character development and animation in Rive, for a character that reacts to how a student is doing. The Upwork posting asked for an illustrator and animator for customizable avatar characters and state-machine-driven animation.

The build

I built the Rive character with nested artboards, so facial features can be driven independently of the body, and a multi-layer state machine with idle loops, attention states, reaction animations and transitions between emotional states. Around it I built the cosmic setting: Galaxy and Nebula backgrounds and a nebula intro sequence that went through seven versions. The latest production file in the folder, version 3.15 (3 September 2025), opens on a SCENE artboard that nests an orb stage with celebrate, bloom, burst and shooting-star effects, driven by seven ViewModels. A separate set of UI buttons went through dozens of numbered versions in late August and September 2025.

The constraint

Educational animation is not entertainment animation. The character has to feel approachable without distracting, idle loops have to hold up over long sessions, transitions have to feel natural at any pace of interaction, and the whole system has to embed in a web app next to other interactive content.

The delivered experience

The platform drives the character through Rive's runtime API. The Drive folder holds 99 Rive files, from version 1.0 on 17 April 2025 to version 3.15 on 3 September 2025, plus the nebula intro renders. The entry carries the production file, a sage variant, the capsule button and the intro videos.

Client feedback

"Ilya provided a fresh and creative mind to our project that brought the first version our our application to life. His knowledge and skills in animation and design would be a value to any project in the future." Gerald O'Sullivan, Teachers Pet, Upwork review