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🔊 New website just dropped! I redesigned my dad’s website for his freelance book cover illustration studio: hallmanstudio.com

I actually built his last website 22 years ago when I was learning PHP and it lasted all that time on a shared server with him uploading new images via FTP. Unfortunately, that website was designed before mobile, so it wasn’t responsive.

I also snuck in a surprise animation for his signature. I knew I wanted to animate this from the start using his exact timing and pacing, but also knew this would be a real technical challenge.

I cut the signature strokes into layers, exported them into individual images, then drew SVG paths over them that I could use as animated masks. From there, it was hours of tweaking durations, delays, and easing functions until it felt right. 😵‍💫

For the radial gradient that fades between books, I actually used Townie AI from val.town to build a quick drag & drop tool that let me extract the dominant colors into JSON. Then, I was able to easily transition between the RGB values as the viewer scrolls.