Pixel flurry

Pixel-art snowflakes drift down in layers of depth, the near ones big and bright, and the pointer brushes them aside as it moves.

element
snow
pixels
pointer
winter
canvas
since 0.2

Background Studio: tune it below, then copy the code

Your system asks for reduced motion: the demo shows its final state and nothing moves.

Live demo

Pixel flurry example

Code

It follows the controls above: change an option and the code changes with it.

<script src="https://search.axi0.io/axi0/motion/motion.js" defer></script>

<axi0-pixel-flurry cover></axi0-pixel-flurry>

import { PixelFlurry } from "./motion/react/PixelFlurry";

<PixelFlurry />

<script setup lang="ts">
import PixelFlurry from "./motion/vue/PixelFlurry.vue";
</script>

<template>
  <PixelFlurry />
</template>

const fx = document.createElement("axi0-pixel-flurry");
document.querySelector("#hero").append(fx);

The wrappers: PixelFlurry.tsx (React, TypeScript) and PixelFlurry.vue (Vue). Both render the same attributes as the HTML; the loader does the rest.

Options

Attribute	Default	What it does
`density`	`2.6`	Flakes per 100 x 100 pixels
`wind`	`0.2`	Sideways drift (negative blows left)
`brush`	`1`	How hard the pointer pushes the flakes
`colors`	auto	Colors, comma separated (empty: the palette for the page's theme)
`background`	auto	Background color (empty: the theme's)
`speed`	`1`	How fast it moves
`theme`	`auto`	Light or dark palette (auto: from the page behind it)
`cover`	`false`	Fill the nearest positioned parent, behind its content

Decorative: the canvas is aria-hidden and takes no focus; with cover it ignores the pointer, so the content above it stays clickable. The pointer only adds to the motion; touch and keyboard users see the same snowfall. Drawn on a 2D canvas at device resolution (capped at 2); it starts when it comes within 300 px of the screen, the frame loop stops off screen and in hidden tabs, and reduced motion draws one still frame with no movement.

Size

pixel-flurry.js is 1.3 KB gzip, with backgrounds-kit.js 3.4 KB it needs. A page loads the loader (2.9 KB) and core.js (1.4 KB) once, whatever it uses.