I’ve added a “spring mode” to my animated SVG desert. Flowers bloom, colours shift, and the whole scene feels more alive—all without creating a separate version. Instead, I’m layering changes on top of the same SVG and letting CSS and JavaScript do the work.

As well as showing off work in progress on Sho!io, I thought it might be interesting to document what I’ve been working on here. So I’m starting a new regular “Last week in the studio” series.

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “CSS relative colour values are now widely supported. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke shares practical techniques for using them to theme and animate SVG graphics.”

Winter’s definitely arrived, and there’s a chill wind blowing. We haven’t had snow in the village yet, but it’s falling on my website, courtesy of a new ‘snow mode.’

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “SVG is one of those web technologies that’s both elegant and, at times, infuriating. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains his technique for animating SVG elements that are hidden in the Shadow DOM.”

When I’ve had a few spare minutes, I’ve been adding to and optimising my Magnificent 7 character animations to improve rendering speed. Then I had the idea to build a silly fairground-style shooting game, and I set myself the challenge of keeping it as small as possible.

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “Ambient animations are subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In part two of his series, web design pioneer Andy Clarke shows how ambient animations can add personality to any website design.”

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “SVGs, they scale, yes, but how else can you make them adapt even better to several screen sizes? Web design pioneer Andy Clarke explains how he builds what he calls “adaptive SVGs” using symbol, use, and CSS Media Queries.”

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “Creating motion can be tricky. Too much and it’s distracting. Too little and a design feels flat. Ambient animations are the middle ground — subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show.”

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “What’s the best way to make your SVGs faster, simpler, and more manageable? Andy Clarke explains the process he relies on to prepare, optimise, and structure SVGs for animation and beyond.”

Working on a design for composer Mike Worth gave me an idea. What if I created animated title cards inspired by classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons? Thirty-five SVG animations later, Toon Titles Series 1 is complete. These are based on artwork from the first appearance of Yogi Bear in The Huckleberry Hound Show.

It’s fascinating just how many opportunities for animations there are in a static cartoon title card. Here’s another Toon Title, this time based on Prize Fight Fright, a Yogi Bear cartoon from February 1959.

This time, I put GSAP and SMIL to one side and made a Toon Title using only CSS animations. It’s based on Bewitched Bear, a Yogi Bear cartoon from January 1960. I’ve written a detailed write-up on optimising SVGs for animations which will be published on Smashing Magazine over the next few weeks.

The more I dive into using the GSAP library for my Toon Title animations, the more I enjoy it. Here’s another Toon Title, this time based on Space Bear, a Yogi Bear cartoon from February 1960. I learned some new things while making this Toon Title, including how to use GSAP’s timeline feature.

The more I dive into using the GSAP library for my Toon Title animations, the more I enjoy it. Here’s another Toon Title based on Nowhere Bear, a Yogi Bear cartoon from December 1959.

Here’s another Toon Title based on Bear Face Bear, a Yogi Bear cartoon from September 1959. I’ve been meaning to experiment with GSAP for a while, and this animation gave me the opportunity.

Here’s another Toon Title and one of my favourites from my growing collection of reanimated Yogi Bear titles. This one’s based on Stranger Ranger, a Yogi Bear cartoon from November 1959.

I had some spare time today between client work and meetings, so I added another Toon Title to my collection. This one’s based on The Buzzin’ Bear, a Yogi Bear cartoon from December 1958.

Designing for Mike Worth’s new website reminded me how much I love classic cartoons. So, after handing over his design, I carried on exploring CSS, SVG, and SMIL animations. I now have a growing collection of Toon Titles.

I now have a growing collection of Toon Titles. But while making them, I discovered two gotchas, which I haven’t seen documented. One for Firefox, the other for Safari.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is out, and I’m so excited that I decided to celebrate by updating another of my responsive easter egg headers— Kerfuffle on the Planet of the Apes —with more efficient, modern code. I’ll explain how I did it, starting with the new optimised SVG images.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll reveal the Easter Egg theme which I hid on Emma’s website.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain how I made experimental banner images for Emma’s home page using SVG masks.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned a few things while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain the pseudo-3D design I created for Emma’s home page banner.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain the SVG filters I created to transform images on Emma’s website.

After writing yesterday’s blog entry on Re-coding Apple’s Black Friday dates I realised I had missed the bleedin’ obvious solution. That instead of wrangling CSS and HTML, SVG could’ve been the better option.

When I was developing the SVG panel for principles on the Stuff & Nonsense about page, I ran into a problem which could only be fixed using.

Given that SVG makes it possible to create cool compositions of images and text, I’m surprised I rarely see designers and developers using it for more than just icons.