The natural reflex by human beings to pay attention to moving objects is what makes animation a powerful tool. CSS animations have ushered a new era in front-end web development. And as opposed to creating your own CSS animation from scratch, you can always save time by working with pre-made code snippets.
These 10 beautiful examples of CSS3 animations employ an intricate use of key frames and animated properties to create beautiful effects and motion using only CSS markup. Without further ado, here 10 beautiful examples of animations you can create (or replicate) using CSS3.
Caaaaaaaat
I mean, what’s there to hate about cats? They are awesome, even those in funny cat videos. Well, there are people out there who think cats are aloof, hence harboring hatred for these beautiful animals. It is sad I know. The good news is, whether you hate cats or not, you definitely will fall in love with this Caaaaaaaaaat animation.
The brainchild of Japanese web designer and interactive director Masayuki Kido, the cat shows you the unbridled power of CSS3 animations. It stretches perfectly across the length of your browser window and as you reduce the size of the browse window, the cat resizes itself. In other words, it is responsive meaning it fits any mobile device.
GT America
Previously known as GT Federal is a sans serif typeface from Grilli type. Designed by Noël Leu with some extra work by Seb McLauchlan, the typeface draws inspiration from American Gothic and European Grotesque typeface genres. All the details on their site fit together to tell the font’s story.
Named after the country from which its inspiration was drawn, the GT America website contains more than 25 beautiful CSS3 animations created by Josh Schaub, an graphic designer from Switzerland. The best thing on the site is you can actually interact with some of the animations. The interaction brings the illustration to life hence telling their story.
In addition, the use of a video is a savvy idea to showcase the versatility in their fonts.
Bennett Feely
This is one unique CSS animation platform that allows you to create little CSS projects. It offers you the opportunity to have a go at HTML5 and CSS3 animations. And all you have to do is tweet @csscreatures with your preferred color, personality and features. The animated project will appear on the site in less than 25 seconds.
The fact is, design work tends to be monotonous at times. In such times, you need to break free from normal routine and indulge in something fun. And what better way of killing boredom than visiting CSS Creatures by Bennett Feely. I spent a lot of my time on one of their other tools (@cssfaces) myself while writing this post.
Periodic Table
When I was in high school, chemistry was one of my least favorite subject. Which means, mastering the periodic table was one hell of a task for yours truly. However, we love web designers for their creative use of new web technologies and this periodic table is proof enough.
A great example of CSS3 animations, this periodic table by Barcelona-based web designer Ricardo Cabello takes CSS and HTML5 design to a whole new level. It starts with animated elements plunging through space towards each other to form a table.
When the table is formed, you are presented with an option to rotate it in three dimensions. Use your mouse to achieve this rotation effect. In addition, you can switch from table to sphere, helix or grid view using the buttons at the bottom of the page.
Waaark
This website is clear indication that the developers paid a lot of attention to detail, and this you will realize as you move from one page to another. Animated features include fading texts, awesome page transitions, swiping gestures, and animated SVG graphics.
If you’re wondering, art director Jimmy Raheriarisoa and frontend developer Antoine Wodniack are the brains behind the Waaark website. Their argument is, the web has become more creative, which means it’s vital to marry the skills of a designer and a developer.
Type Terms
Created by Supremo, a web design agency in Manchester, Type Terms is an animated cheatsheet that educates you about different parts of letters. As you already know, cheatsheets are created for quick references. So, if you are new to typography or you want to refresh your memory, this is CSS animation is exactly what you need.
The team over at Supremo experimented with SVG and CSS3 animations and the result is Type Terms. On doing some research, they discovered typographic websites used simple static images. This presented the perfect opportunity to create something more visually engaging. It’s a delight learning from a resource that is fun to explore.
One Shared House
One Shared House is a web documentary that shows UX designer Irene Pereyra’s experiences growing up. She grew up in a feminist community in Amsterdam in the 1970s. When you land on the website, you immediately notice that you are not alone. Your cursor movements are followed around by her eyes and it’s not creepy; it’s awesome!
The site doesn’t use common scrolling techniques, rather it employs the bottom screen to display exploratory content. This offers you the opportunity to determine how much involvement you want with the story. This site delivers a fascinating novel experience by combining CSS3 animations and storytelling.
Cloud Icons
A while ago, the only way to fade an image or element required JavaScript/jQuery. Anything else would have resulted in total failure. However, times have changed and you can easily create awesome fading effects using HTML5 and CSS3.
Dustin Boersma created this CSS3 animation using small cloud icons with a customized CSS3 fade effect. The result? One of the best CSS-animated icons you can use on your site. From this demo, it’s evident that CSS fade effects (among other effects) can really spice up any layout.
AT-AT Walker
CSS3 animations can’t get any better, what with this one of a kind masterpiece by Anthony Calzadilla. This animation of the All-Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT) Walker is inspired by Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back movie.
It features an AT-AT that’s subtly moving through the screen window of an iPad. The Walker alternates between looking straight ahead and down, thus displaying a mindful assessment of its environment. In addition, you can click the ‘view bones’ link to see how each part animates or functions.
Gooey Menu
Navigational menus play an important part on any website. The better your navigation, the better user experience you can offer, which translates to better business. This is precisely why you need to accurate, clear and easy to use menus that draw users to your content.
Gooey Menu is an example of the kind of menus you can create using CSS3 animations. This example uses HTML and SCSS, which is an initialism for Sassy CSS and a superset of CSS3’s syntax. This baby is a hamburger menu that opens smoothly into a “gooey-like” menu that looks awesome.
Conclusion
CSS3 animations point to the long strides made in the world of web design. Not so long ago, we would have leaned on JavaScript or Flash to achieve certain animated effects. Nowadays, we can easily achieve animation effects in our designs using a few lines of CSS.
