Motion

Natural acceleration and deceleration. No linear movement — ever. Elements speed up as they depart and slow as they arrive, like physical objects with mass.

Staggered timing across related elements. Nothing enters simultaneously. A 40-80ms offset between siblings creates the feeling of coordinated life.

Soft opacity transitions. No hard cuts between states. Elements emerge from and dissolve into the void — the black background is the source and destination.

Shapes shift between states. Charts morph between types. Faces cross-fade through ages. Text reforms from particles. The object changes — it is not replaced.

Shapes as containers. Content reveals through geometric or organic masks — fire burns through a rectangle, text flows around 3D geometry, images emerge from silhouettes.

Depth illusion via layering, parallax, and z-axis movement. The screen is not flat — it has rooms. pretext.js 3D layers, knowledge graph nodes floating at different depths.

Multi-layer scrolling. Background moves slower than foreground. Creates spatial depth on 2D surfaces. Every scrollytelling page uses this.

Continuity through magnification. Enter a Du Bois plate by zooming in. Emerge from a knowledge graph node. The transition between scales maintains spatial memory.