Settings

Theme

Show HN: Animated Watch Illustrations with CSS3 and SVG

wrist.im

41 points by mattsjohnston5 13 years ago · 17 comments · 1 min read

Reader

I wanted a little project to practice illustration as well as animation on the web. Plus I'm a big fan of watches.

systemtrigger 13 years ago

Impressive attention to detail. I love how there is a slight difference between the way the second hand ticks, between models. Did you start each one with a photo as scaffolding and draw the SVG on top? Did you use Illustrator or Gimp? Beautiful execution.

  • mattsjohnston5OP 13 years ago

    Yeah, for each illustration I started with a front-facing photo and lined up the center of the face with the exact center of the document. From there I make sure every circle I draw is perfectly centered and I draw all the hands facing upwards.

colmvp 13 years ago

Really nice job, Matt. I especially like the color choices. Very fun.

emhart 13 years ago

Downright inspiring. I'm not a killjoy, but I am rarely excited by these sorts of illustrative personal projects. something about this, though, really captures my attention. Especially that you intend to continue working your way through more. Many of my friends are horophiles if you happen to be taking requests.

Also, any chance of you doing a time-lapse of your process at some point?

  • mattsjohnston5OP 13 years ago

    Thanks for the encouragement. I've thought about doing a tutorial, but I hadn't considered doing a tmelapse. That could be pretty cool.

    • emhart 13 years ago

      Tutorials are great, but when something comes close enough to my domain to understand it pretty well, I love a timelapse as I have those "OH! I see what you did there!" moments while getting an appreciation for the full scope of the project.

      Either way, I'll be checking back regularly. Great work.

    • Kronopath 13 years ago

      A tutorial would be wonderful. I'd actually had the idea to make something eerily similar to this for a while. I was considering something more canvas-y, but you've now got me wondering whether CSS3+SVG would be nicer.

  • mattsjohnston5OP 13 years ago

    Oh, and I love getting suggestions. Have your friends tweet me their favorite watches and I'll check them out!

MikeAmelung 13 years ago

Why does it animate counter-clockwise when I click from San Francisco to London?

  • mattsjohnston5OP 13 years ago

    I think it does that when London is already a day ahead of the current timezone. That's obviously a bit counter intuitive so if like to get that working properly.

premasagar 13 years ago

Very nicely executed.

supercoder 13 years ago

Lovely!

tantalor 13 years ago

Are you trying to get sued?

Keyboard Shortcuts

j
Next item
k
Previous item
o / Enter
Open selected item
?
Show this help
Esc
Close modal / clear selection