Built with Rive
Willo: Mascot Character System for Devlands
Ilya G.
Willo — mascot character animation for Devlands
The Project
Willo is the mascot of Devlands, a gamified developer education platform built by Initial Commit (Jacob Stopak). I built the character rig and ten production animations for Willo, designed to live inside the platform and react to user progress in real time.
The Challenge
Jacob needed a mascot that would feel alive, not animated-GIF-static. The character had to ship inside an interactive education product, not a marketing video — meaning every animation had to work as part of a state-machine-driven behavior system, not as a one-off render. The brief: personality, range of expressions, and enough animation variety to feel like the same character across many different student interactions.
What I Built
A complete Rive character rig from scratch — bone-based skeleton, IK constraints for natural limb movement, modular expression controls so facial features move independently of the body. Then ten distinct production animations on the shared rig, covering the states the character needed: idle loops, reactions, encouragement, confusion, celebration. Each one works on its own but shares the rig's weight and timing.
The rig was designed for reuse. Future animations can be added to the same skeleton without rebuilding the character. State machine logic handles the behavioral routing, so the developer tool triggers transitions programmatically through Rive's runtime API.
Technical Highlights
Bone-based character rig with IK and modular expression system
10 production animations on the shared rig
State-machine architecture for programmatic, runtime-driven transitions
Web-ready Rive file optimized for embedding
Custom hero animation for the Devlands website
The Result
Willo lives in Devlands as the character that nods, reacts, and expresses encouragement or confusion depending on what the student is doing.
"Ilya was excellent to work with in every way. He took the time to understand my project requirements and put his creative spin on things in a way that still fit in with my project aesthetic. He went above and beyond to create a custom Rive animation for my website and about 10 character animations for me to use for game development. He is generous with iterations and will work with you until you're satisfied with the result. I'd HIGHLY recommend Ilya for any animation or graphic design project." — Jacob Stopak, Initial Commit LLC (5.0/5.0 rating)
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Posted Nov 30, 2025
Complete Rive character rig and 10 production animations for Willo, the mascot of Devlands — Initial Commit's gamified developer education platform. Skeleton + IK + modular expression system, state-machine-driven for programmatic triggers based on user progress.
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