Slow Animations For Focusing

Enjoy these slow, calm animations while you think, unwind, or focus.

They're designed to be interesting, but not distracting, and they won't drain your device's battery. (That's why the previews all auto-pause after twenty seconds.)

By Tyler Mumford

Animations

surf

recharge

sockets

color

warp

▶️ Which one is your favorite? Let me know: email@slowanimations.com


What's the point?

In a word, attention.

Animations like these are interesting enough to hold your attention, so you can watch them while you zone out or think deeply. But they don't capture your attention, so you're always free to think about whatever you choose.

They just occupy the part of your brain that wants a little visual stimulation.

Eventually, I hope to create a desktop app so the animations can be displayed in small windows that stay on top of other apps. I also want to create little simulated "worlds" or scenes that evolve and change slowly over the course of days or weeks.

What do you think? This project is still brand-new, so I'd love your thoughts and feedback. You can reach me at email@slowanimations.com or on Mastodon as @tylermumford.


Audio For Focusing

Read more

These songs and sounds will support your focus, as well:


Tech details for the curious

Read more

This site is designed to be power-efficient, so I built it with techniques like requestAnimationFrame and auto-pausing previews. I'm also using system fonts and vector images to save bandwidth and loading time. (The JavaScript isn't bad, but there's some low-hanging fruit I still need to optimize. I'm trying to avoid using a bundler for as long as possible, but I'm reaching the point where it will certainly be useful.)

Tech used to build the site: Astro, Alpine.js, Three.js, GoatCounter, Just, and Mercurial.

I believe the source code of the web should be readable, so I've enabled sourcemaps and avoided unnecessary minification. However, I've also embraced Astro, which means the code is not as friendly to the human brain as I'd like. So, if you'd like to see the source directly, please let me know.