A one-trick site, but what a delightful trick! Pablo (opens in new tab) is a flamingo who loves to dance, and he’s brought to life beautifully in fully responsive WebGL (opens in new tab). Just don't try to mute the sound...
Pablo is the result of a collaboration between authors Nathan Gordon, Pascal van der Haar and Jono Yuen. It isn’t a promotional site, but a side-project that came about through a conversation between web developer Gordon and art director Van der Haar.
How it was made
Pablo began life as a model constructed in Maya (opens in new tab). This was then exported as a simple grid mesh, to which the illustrations by designer Yuen were added as a texture. The models were then brought into the browser, where 3D modelling library three.js and physics library Matter.js were used to bring Pablo to life online.
"I was able to create a precise form that could be directly mapped to the physics base. This gave me the result that I was after, and was the largest 'aha!' moment of the whole project," says Gordon.
The response from the public has been incredible - in his first week online Pablo was seen 60,000 times, won FWA Site of the Day and earned countless plaudits across social media.
Words: Peter Gasston (opens in new tab)
Peter Gasston is a veteran web developer who now works as a technologist and frontend lead at rehabstudio. He’s the author of The Book of CSS3 and The Modern Web.
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