Rive articles and design guides

Rive brought a real-time, state-machine approach to vector animation, and it's quietly become the tool of choice for interactive motion that has to respond to input. These pieces cover building state machines that stay maintainable, wiring Rive into web and app projects, and where it beats Lottie (and where it doesn't). Hands-on, with the trade-offs spelled out.

We also get into the boring parts nobody demos, because they decide whether a file survives contact with a real project. Naming inputs so an engineer can read the state machine without opening it. Keeping listeners off nested artboards. Watching runtime cost when one artboard drives twelve animations at once. Is Rive the right default for every micro-interaction? No. A plain CSS transition still wins plenty of those arguments on file size alone.