Show HN: Animated Watch Illustrations with CSS3 and SVG

Show HN: Animated Watch Illustrations with CSS3 and SVG(wrist.im)

41 points by mattsjohnston5 12 years ago | 16 comments

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

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.

mattsjohnston5 12 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 12 years ago |

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

emhart 12 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?

mattsjohnston5 12 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 12 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 12 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.

mattsjohnston5 12 years ago | |

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

emhart 12 years ago | | |

Will do :)

MikeAmelung 12 years ago |

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

mattsjohnston5 12 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 12 years ago |

Very nicely executed.

supercoder 12 years ago |

Lovely!

tantalor 12 years ago |

Are you trying to get sued?

mattsjohnston5 12 years ago | |

I already had Timex tweet out the site! https://twitter.com/timex/status/369505126752346112

mmcnickle 12 years ago | | |

I doubt Rolex will do the same. They are extremely protective of their brand[1], I'd avoid doing one of their watches.

[1] To the point where they won't let you host their brand assets on your own servers. You have to link to theirs, so they can revoke access when they please.