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Today we’d like to share a shape layer animation with you. The inspiration for this effect comes from the fantastic work by Diana Hlevnjak (Polar Vector) “Gradient Topography”. We use anime.js for the animations and Charming for the letter effects.

After seeing the artwork, we thought it would be awesome to animate these kind of gradient layers of an organic shape in an interesting way. For this we’ve created a little layout that has several shapes spread on the page and when a menu item is clicked, the associated shape group will expand to full screen and some content is shown.

The demo is kindly sponsored by monday.com: The perfect project management tool for designers. If you would like to sponsor one of our demos, find out more here.

Attention: We’re using CSS variables, grid and flexbox for the demos, so please view this with a modern browser.

The organic shapes consist of path layers where each one has the same gradient but a decreasing fill opacity. This creates an interesting look and when animated, fills the entire screen with the semi transparent layers until it’s fully opaque after the last layer enlarges. The other shapes scale down.

Have a look at some screenshots:

We hope you enjoy this little effect and find it useful!

References and Credits

• Based on the artwork “Gradient Topography” by Diana Hlevnjak
• Anime.js by Julian Garnier
• Charming by Yuan Qing