Character Design & Animation Intern

Olive is an AI-powered plant care and community app. It helps everyday plant owners keep their plants alive, build confidence, and connect with local plant shops. Our core feature, the Dynamic Care Guide, works like this: users snap a weekly photo of their plant and log a few quick observations, and Olive turns that into a personalized care guide that changes as the plant grows. We recently completed the gBETA accelerator, in partnership with Meta.
The internship
Olive has four mascots, and they shape how the app feels. In this internship, you’ll work with our design team to refresh them and learn to bring them to life with interactive animation in Rive. You’ll get mentorship and regular feedback, and you’ll finish with shipped work in a live product for your portfolio.
What you’ll work on
Refreshing our four mascots with guidance from our design team, refining personality, shape, and color so they work as a set
Creating a simple expression sheet for each character
Learning and building a small set of Rive animations, such as an idle loop, a welcome moment, and a few reactions for weekly plant check-ins
Joining design reviews and seeing how animation gets implemented in a real app
What you’ll get
Mentorship from our design team, with weekly check-ins and feedback
Hands-on experience with Rive, including state machines
Portfolio pieces from a live, shipped product, credited to you
A reference letter on successful completion
Who we’re looking for
A current student, ideally graduating in 2027, studying illustration, animation, or design
A portfolio with original character design work
A good grasp of shape, silhouette, and expression
Comfort in a vector tool (Illustrator, Figma, or similar)
Interest in animation. Rive, Lottie, or After Effects experience is a plus, but you don’t need it. We’ll help you learn.
Bonus: you like plants. You’ll be drawing a lot of leaves.
Schedule & details
Unpaid internship
Part-time, up to 20 hours a week
Fully remote
Flexible around your class schedule
4 months

Work arrangement
Yes