EchoForge

Audience

Creators, educators, and anyone who wants to make and perform with a playful character without learning a traditional animation editor.

The challenge

The earlier EchoForge voice lab explored character delivery. The next step was to bring the character itself into the same playful workflow: choose parts, see an immediate reaction, keep the creation, and record a take.

The approach

Build around a native Rive character stage with expressive square faces, original facial parts, and performance controls. Keep ordinary text entry, audio handling, and recording controls in the browser application.

What SideQuest Studio handled

Product and interaction design · Original modular character artwork · Rive stage and UI development · Browser recording · Independent VPS deployment

Important decisions

• Use Rive for the character while preserving accessible HTML controls.
• Provide Pop, Deadpan, and Wild as starting points for expressive square faces.
• Keep automatic performance available without requiring a camera.
• Explain that studio speech text is sent to the private server, and that studio audio can be included in takes.

Accessibility

• Keep controls keyboard reachable and provide text labels for actions and canvas content.
• Respect reduced-motion preferences and let people pause idle motion.

Testing and iteration

• Verify type checks, character behavior checks, and the production build.
• Inspect the served Rive character and public browser controls.
• Keep physical-device camera and microphone proof separate from automated browser checks.

Current outcome

A deployed character playground with a native Rive stage, expressive square faces, studio speech, and video take controls.

Known limitations

• Audio-energy mouth motion approximates speech shapes rather than phoneme-level lip sync.
• Physical camera, microphone, and complete recording behavior still need device review.

Next steps

• Refine character performance and voice workflows from hands-on use.
• Expand original character templates and publishing options while keeping the free creation loop useful.