First experiments with Rive + Scripting: Some VHS-inspired effects 📼 Unfortunately, my back‑to‑w...First experiments with Rive + Scripting: Some VHS-inspired effects 📼 Unfortunately, my back‑to‑w...
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
First experiments with Rive + Scripting: Some VHS-inspired effects 📼
Unfortunately, my back‑to‑work stage after the holidays has me a bit swamped, so I probably won’t have time to submit anything to the Scripting challenge. Still, I wanted to share these early experiments 😊
I’m also planning a deeper article on Scripting, so there’ll be more on all this soon! In the meantime, have you tried it yet? What’s your experience so far? Are you joining the Scripting challenge? 👀
These VHS effects are SO cool! Love that nostalgic glitch aesthetic with the wireframe skull - it's got serious retro vibes. The combination of Rive + scripting opens up such creative possibilities. Those distortion effects and scan lines are perfectly executed. Even as early...
A little look at the logo I designed for COPE, the personal brand of motivational speaker Josh Copeland.
The goal was to create something simple, recognizable, and meaningful that could grow alongside Josh and his message.
Pretty cool to see this one go on to receive recognition and earn a spot in LogoLounge Book 15 alongside some incredible identity work from around the world.
Always rewarding when a project you believe in gets recognized beyond the original brief.
🕯️ THE MIDNIGHT APOTHECARY
The dead can't speak. Read them.
One night a year, the dead visit Mother Ashgrove's apothecary. They can't speak, so you read the signs they carry, brew the right potion and send them home before midnight. Each soul you help comes back to life for a moment, leaves you a last line and lights a candle.
Some places feel like memories even if you've never been there. For me, an old apothecary at midnight is one of them: candlelight on glass jars, rain against the window, something strange simmering on the fire. This game is that feeling, and a quiet place where the dead can finally be heard.
Rive CLI + Rive Markup: the whole scene written from the command line by my coding agent and refined live in the preview
GPU Canvas: 10 WGSL shaders, including the ghost static and resolve, a real fire, the swirling brew, candlelight, fog, rain, the crystal ball and the room effects
Scripting: 48 Luau scripts run the nights, visitors, stirring and bottles
Data Binding: 1,160 bindings, with data-bound lists for the Ledger and the Gathering
State Machines, events, audio, nested artboards, constraints, bones, blend states and feathering
─────────────
🖋️ HUMAN TOUCH
This is my first project in Rive. I designed and directed it over 21 build steps, playing every version and art-directing every prop and character: the haunted shop with its real fire, a candelabra that lights one blood-dripping candle for every soul you send home, a sober velvet witch whose face stays hidden, and 24 visitors who each have their own story and their own bottle.
─────────────
🎮 HOW TO PLAY
Find the two signs each visitor carries
Drag the matching ingredients into the cauldron
Grab the ladle and stir three circles
Watch the clock: hints and wrong brews cost time
─────────────
🌙 WHAT'S INSIDE
3 nights and 24 visitors, each with their own story, bottle and last line
Visitors who change the room: a flood, frost, a room drained to sepia, a Horseman who can't drink
A grimoire, a ledger of the dead, a raven that follows your cursor, a cat in the basket
Something that knocks instead of drifting… and one last visitor you won't expect
- The video shows the game in action and a glimpse of my agent workflow and code.
Process note:
🌑 Echo is a black screen where every sound sends a wave of light through the scene in real depth.
🎞️ Starting footage: one licensed stock clip of a temple corridor from invideo's stock library. The sound is original, synthesised for this piece. The voiceover is my own.
💬 What I asked for: a black screen where each ping lights the scene by distance, built from a depth map, with controls for each wave, afterglow, wave thickness, contour lines, outlines, colour and a final reveal.
🛠️ What was built: a depth map (Depth Anything Video), two "Echo" custom effects on the depth map (a Multiply layer for light and an Add layer for glow), an "Echo colour" effect on the footage, and keyframes for six waves and the reveal. The first build was done by Claude, connected to invideo Editor through invideo's MCP server.
🎚️ Refinement: I asked invideo's own agent (Agent Two Lite) in the editor to raise Afterglow from 0.14 to 0.3 on both Echo effects. It made the change on the timeline, and that conversation is shown in the video. I also tried a longer afterglow and a gold colour, both shown.
✅ All building and the final cut were done in invideo Editor.