A drawer for every part

The lake on the front of this site is built from parts: pines, boulders, clouds, a moon, a fisherman in a paper boat, and a cast of animals that wander in. The Parts Catalog is where every one of those pieces lives on its own, running live with the same code the scene uses, so I can find it, check it and change it without opening the whole lake.

There are 60 parts in 9 groups. 40 run live, 17 are reference pictures of older versions, and 3 are still in progress. A search box narrows them as you type, and every part has its own link.

The animals

The animals are the heart of it. 15 origami creatures are rigged at the joints, so a deer can lower its head to graze, look up when something moves, or walk off the card. Between them there are about 17 behaviours and 9 short stories that chain them together. Each card has the controls the scene has: season, day or night, behaviour, and weather. Pick winter and the coats change; pick a blizzard and snow sticks to their backs. Rain beads on them too.

One loop for forty cards

Forty live cards could easily melt a phone. They all share one animation loop, and any card that isn't on screen sleeps until it scrolls back.

What I cut

I cut something here too. There used to be a toggle between flat silhouettes and origami. The origami won, so the silhouettes went.

The origami won, so the silhouettes went.

The deep-sea header

The header came last: a deep-sea scene with Marley floating in a jellyfish, a diver beside her, and two dozen creatures I lifted out of the painting so they could move on their own, down to an anglerfish with a glowing lure. A whale was the first idea and a dead end. A giant paper squid took its place.

What I learned: build the parts where you can see them alone. A deer that looks right on its own card looks right on the lake, and when something breaks, there's exactly one drawer to open.