Responses by Patrick Heintzmann.
Background: Besides showcasing some of my favorite projects over the past few years, the site’s main purpose was to regain some drive and satisfaction in creating digital work. I dove into some technical approaches just to see if I could make what I had in mind.
Design core: The way of abstraction of basic HTML elements—like text, images and videos—into WebGL equivalents to enable more freedom in the way they can be animated. Style wise, the fun parts are the animations and the interactivity of the main headlines, the page transitions and the video backgrounds.
Favorite details: The interaction with the environment and the character on the main page. The site subtly teases possible interactions with the character and rewards the user if he is doing so by clicking on it.
Divergent paths: If I were to redo the site, I would create a more story- and interactivity-driven experience that engages users to explore the space.
Technology: Vue.js for the front-end framework. three.js for the WebGL. Custom GLSL shaders for the fonts and the page transitions. GSAP for the animation library. Blender for the character modeling. Mixamo for the character animations. And AWS S3 and Cloudfront for hosting.