Used well, CSS animation is an incredibly useful and powerful tool. It can add interest or creative excitement, direct the user's eye, explain something quickly and succinctly, and improve usability. For that reason, recent years have seen more and more animation on sites and in app.

In this article, we round up some of the coolest CSS animation examples we've seen, and show you how to recreate them. Read on for a range of in-depth tutorials and inspiring effects (and links to their code) to explore.

What is CSS animation?

CSS animation is a method of animating certain HTML elements without having to use processor and memory-hungry JavaScript or Flash. There's no limit to the number or frequency of CSS properties that can be changed. CSS animations are initiated by specifying keyframes for the animation: these keyframes contain the styles that the element will have.

While it may seem limited when it comes to animation, CSS is actually a really powerful tool and is capable of producing beautifully smooth 60fps animations. "Delivering thoughtful, fluid animations that contribute meaningful depth to your site doesn’t have to be difficult," says front end web developer Adam Kuhn. "Modern CSS properties now hand you nearly all of the tools you’ll need to create memorable experiences for your users."

The best animations still have their roots in Disney's classic 12 principles of animation – you'll see several mentions of that throughout these CSS animation examples, so it's worth checking out that article before you get started. You might also want to explore our roundup of great animated music videos for further examples and inspiration.

The golden rule is that your CSS animations shouldn't be overblown – even a small movement can have a big impact, and too much can be distracting and irritating for users. Here are our favourite examples and how to recreate them.

01. Fun mouse effect

This is a fun effect that follows your mouse around. It could be useful when you want to draw attention to an element on your page.

We need very little HTML for this effect:

<div class="demo"> <div class="perspective-container"> <div class="card"></div> </div> </div>

First, we position the demo and set perspective for our 3D transform:

.demo { background-color: hsl(207, 9%, 19%); display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; height: 100vh; width: 100%; } .perspective-container { perspective: 800px; }

Then style the div we want to animate:

.card { background-image: url(https://media.giphy.com/media/sIIhZliB2McAo/giphy.gif); background-size: cover; box-shadow: 0 0 140px 10px rgba(0,0,0,.5); position: relative; height: 300px; width: 500px; overflow: hidden; /* Try removing this to see how the sheen works! */ --sheenX: 0; /* Set these with JavaScript */ --sheenY: 0; }

Here we set a background, then we set overflow to hidden so that we can add a sheen effect later. We also set css variables, sheenX and sheenY.

These sheen variables will help position the sheen effect. We use them in our card's after pseudo-element:

.card::after { content: ""; position: absolute; top: -400px; right: -400px; bottom: -400px; left: -400px; background: linear-gradient(217deg, rgba(255,255,255,0), rgba(255,255,255,0) 35%, rgba(255,255,255,0.25) 45%, rgba(255,255,255,.25) 50%, rgba(255,255,255,0) 60%, rgba(255,255,255,0) 100%); transform: translateX(var(--sheenX)) translateY(var(--sheenY)); }

Here we're making sure the pseudo-element is bigger than the container. This will give us something to slide around on top of the card using transform.

The transform property is making use of those CSS variables we set earlier. We will set those with JavaScript. Let's set up the JavaScript to first listen for mouse events:

document.onmousemove = handleMouseMove;

We now need a handleMouseMove function to handle onmousemove:

function handleMouseMove(event) { const height = window.innerHeight; const width = window.innerWidth; // Creates angles of (-20, -20) (left, bottom) and (20, 20) (right, top) const yAxisDegree = event.pageX / width * 40 - 20; const xAxisDegree = event.pageY / height * -1 * 40 + 20; target.style.transform = `rotateY(${yAxisDegree}deg) rotateX(${xAxisDegree}deg)`; // Set the sheen position setSheenPosition(event.pageX / width, event.pageY / width); }

Our function takes the window height and width and creates an angle on the X and Y axes. We then set these to the transform style of our card. This gives the card an angle based on the mouse!

We next call a function to set the pseudo-element's position:

function setSheenPosition(xRatio, yRatio) { // This creates a "distance" up to 400px each direction to offset the sheen const xOffset = 1 - (xRatio - 0.5) * 800; const yOffset = 1 - (yRatio - 0.5) * 800; target.style.setProperty('--sheenX', `${xOffset}px`) target.style.setProperty('--sheenY', `${yOffset}px`) }

Our pseudo-element looks best when it moves in the opposite direction to the mouse. To achieve this we create a number between -0.5 and 0.5 that changes in the opposite direction by calculating the ratio by -1.

We multiply this number by 800 as we want it to scale up to a maximum of 400px, which is how far we set the sheen pseudo-element outside the card.

Lastly we set these offset values to our CSS variable properties, and the browser's renderer does the rest.

We now have a card that turns to face our mouse while the sheen effect moves in the opposite direction on top. This creates a nice, eye-catching effect.

02. The big reveal

Animated content reveal effects seem to be quite popular right now, and used properly they can capture user focus and engage your audience. You’ve seen this before: a block of colour grows from one side or another horizontally or vertically, and then retreats to the opposing side, this time revealing some text or an image beneath. It’s a concept that might seem tricky but really relies on just a few things.

First, we’ll set up our element positioning (download the full code here) – define it as relative (only static will fail in this case). In text cases it’s best to allow automatic height and width, although a bit of padding doesn’t hurt. We’ll also define a transform origin, in the case of the parent element we want to use the starting position. Since we want the element hidden initially, we’ll use a scale transform along the appropriate axis to shrink it.

Next, a a pseudo element to mask our parent, setting the transform origin to the opposing option. Finally, string together the animations, using either the timing functions or delays to offset each.

Note, we’ve offset the parent and pseudo element’s animations with a delay telling the box that hides our text to reveal it only after the element itself has fully scaled into view. Check out the Codepen below.

03. Stagger on

Author: Adam Kuhn

Once you’ve begun to accumulate a decent library of various easing snippets, it’s time to look into other ways to enhance the depth of your animations, and one of the best ways is to offset your animated elements.

It’s all too common that a JavaScript trigger is set to initiate a bunch of animations based on scroll position, only to find all items moving effectively in tandem. Fortunately CSS itself provides a simple property that can make (or break) your animated experience: animation-delay.

Let’s say, for instance, we have a grid of images we want to animate into frame when the user scrolls. There’s a number of ways we could trigger this, most likely adding classes to the elements as they enter the viewport. This can be quite a heavy lift on the browser, however, and can be avoided by simply adding a single class to a container element and defining animation delays on child elements.

This is a particularly good use case for preprocessors like SCSS or LESS, which allow us to use a @for loop to iterate through each element.

#parent{ .child{ animation: animationName 1.5s ease-in-out 1 forwards; @for $i from 1 through 20{ &:nth-of-type(#{$i}){ animation-delay:#{$i/10}s; } } } }

Here you’ll see with SCSS we are able to loop through each :nth-of-type selector, then apply an animation delay based on each child element’s numerical value. In this case you’ll note we divide up our timing to reduce each increment to a fraction of a second. While offsetting your animated elements can lend emotion to your animation, too much delay can make it feel disjointed. Check out this CodePen below.

04. Squigglevision

Author: Adam Kuhn

SVG filters provide a great way to achieve a natural, hand-drawn feel and escape some of the flat-feeling rendering constraints of CSS alone. Animating them can further enhance the effect.

Case in point: Squigglevision. Yeah, this isn’t a technical term known to most animators, but you’ve surely seen it employed in cartoons. The idea is that the edges of these animated elements are not only somewhat jagged and rough-hewn, but these rough edges quickly variate, frame by frame, making them feel as though they've been ripped from the pages of a sketchbook and brought to life.

To achieve this effect, we can include an SVG on our page with multiple filters and slight variations in turbulence levels for each. Next, we’ll set up our animation timeline, calling each filter in its own keyframe. It’s important to play with the timing durations as we anticipate the animation will feel 'jumpy' but don’t want it so slow as to feel disjointed or so fast as to feel crazy.

To that end, it’s important to note that CSS lacks the ability to smoothly transition between SVG filters as there is no way to access properties such as turbulence and scale, so these types of animations should always be expected to be choppy.

05. Tumbling lettering

Google's Game of the Year features a playful CSS animation on the homepage, with the title words tumbling and bumping into one another. Here's how it was done.

The first step is to define the webpage document with HTML. It consists of the HTML document container, which stores a head and body section. While the head section is used to load the external CSS and JavaScript resources, the body is used to store the page content.

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Off Kilter Text Animation</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css"/> <script src="code.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1 class="animate backwards">The Animated Title</h1> <h1 class="animate forwards">The Animated Title</h1> <h1 class="animate mixed">The Animated Title </h1> </body> </html>

The page content consists of three h1 title tags that will show the different variations of the animation effect. While any text can be inserted into these tags, their animation is defined by the names in the class attribute. The presentation and animation settings for these class names will be defined in the CSS later on.

Next, create a new file called 'code.js'. We want to find all page elements with the animate class and create an array list representing each word of the inner text. The initial animation delay is also defined in this step. Page content is not available until the page has fully loaded, so this code is being placed inside the window’s load event listener.

The word content of the animation items needs to be contained inside a span element. To do this, the existing HTML content is reset to blank, then a loop is used to make the word in the identified 'words' list a span element. Additionally, an animationDelay style is applied – calculated in relation to the initial delay (specified below) and the word’s index position.

window.addEventListener("load", function(){ var delay = 2; var nodes = document.querySelectorAll (".animate"); for(var i=0; i<nodes.length; i++){ var words = nodes[i].innerText.split(" "); nodes[i].innerHTML = ""; for(var i2=0; i2<words.length; i2++){ var item = document.createElement("span"); item.innerText = words[i2]; var calc = (delay+((nodes.length + i2)/3)); item.style.animationDelay = calc+"s"; nodes[i].appendChild(item); } } });

Create a new file called styles.css. Now we'll set the presentation rules that will be part of every word element in the animation, controlled by their span tag. Display as block, combined with centred text alignment, will result in each word appearing on a separate line horizontally aligned to the middle of its container. Relative positioning will be used to animate in relation to its text-flow position.

.animate span{ display: block; position: relative; text-align: center; }

Animation elements that have the backwards and forwards class have a specific animation applied to them. This step defines the animation to apply to span elements whose parent container has both the animate and backwards or forwards class.

Note how there is no space between the animate and backwards class reference, meaning the parent element must have both.

.animate.backwards > span{ animation: animateBackwards 1s ease-in-out forwards; } .animate.forwards > span{ animation: animateForwards 1s ease-in-out forwards; }

The mixed animation is defined using the same settings used for the forwards and backwards animations. Instead of applying the animations to every child of the parent, the nth-child selector is used to apply alternating animation settings. The backwards animation is applied to every even-number child, while the forwards animation is applied to every odd-number child.

.animate.mixed > span:nth-child(even){ animation: animateBackwards 1s ease-in-out forwards; } .animate.mixed > span:nth-child(odd){ animation: animateForwards 1s ease-in-out forwards; }

The animations we've just created are made with an initial 'from' starting position, with no vertical position or rotation adjustment. The 'to' position is the final state of the animation, which sets the elements with an adjusted vertical position and rotation state. Slightly different ending settings are used for both animations to avoid the text becoming unreadable due to overlap in mixed animations.

@keyframes animateForwards { from { top: 0; transform: rotate(0deg); } to { top: .9em; transform: rotate(-15deg); } } @keyframes animateBackwards { from { top: 0; transform: rotate(0deg); } to { top: 1em; transform: rotate(25deg); } }

06. Flip book

Author: Adam Kuhn

When animating with CSS sometimes a dead simple approach is necessary. And there are few simpler animation methods than the flip book. Using steps () as our timing function, we are able to replicate this effect. While this might sound choppy and directly contradict our mission to maintain fluidity, with the right pacing it can feel just as seamlessly organic.

So how does it work? We define our animation easing function with just a few additional parameters – telling our animation how many steps are needed and at which point during the first step we’d like to begin (start, end) – looking a little like this, for example steps (10, start).

Within our keyframes, we can now designate an end point to our animation: for this example let's assume our animation is 10 seconds long and we’re using 10 steps. In this case, each step will be one second long, immediately moving to the following one-second frame with no transition between.

Again, this seems to fly in the face of fluidity, but here’s where stepped animations can really shine. We can incrementally iterate through a sprite sheet and animate frame-by-frame just like a flip book. By defining frames of equal size but compiling them onto a single horizontal (or vertical) image, we can set this image as an element background and define a pixel or percentage background position as an end point to our animation, allowing a single step for each frame. The sprite sheet will then shift and populate the element frame by frame with a fresh background image based on its position.

Let’s take a look at an example. In this case some sets of animated legs appended to some text characters. First, we’ll define our animation name, duration, step count, start position and iteration count:

animation:runner 0.75s steps(32, end) infinite;

Again, note that the duration is relatively speedy at less than one full second for 32 total frames. Next, we’ll define our keyframes:

@keyframes runner{ from{ background-position:0px 50%;} to{ background-position:- 1280px 50%; }}

Note that the vertical positioning of the image is consistent throughout, which tells us that the sprites are horizontally stretched across the image, which is 1280px in total width. As we’ve defined 32 total frames for that image, we can deduce that each frame should be 40px wide. Check out this Codepen below.

It’s important to note that a large sprite sheet can potentially be a severe drag on performance, so be sure to size and compress images. With a well-crafted sprite sheet and an appropriate animation duration you now have a smooth animation able to convey complex motions.

07. Blowing bubbles

The CSS bubble animation that features on 7UP is a beautiful example of carrying a brand theme through into the website design. The animation consists of a few elements: the SVG ‘drawing’ of the bubbles and then two animations applied to each bubble.

The first animation changes the opacity of the bubble and moves it vertically in the view box; the second creates the wobbling effect for added realism. The offsets are handled by targeting each bubble and applying a different animation duration and delay.

In order to create our bubbles we’ll be using SVG. In our SVG we create two layers of bubbles: one for the larger bubbles and one for the smaller bubbles. Inside the SVG we position all of our bubbles at the bottom of the view box.

<g class="bubbles-large" stroke-width="7"> <g transform="translate(10 940)"> <circle cx="35" cy="35" r="35"/> </g> ... </g> <g class="bubbles-small" stroke-width="4"> <g transform="translate(147 984)"> <circle cx="15" cy="15" r="15"/> </g> </g> ... </g>

In order to apply two separate animations to our SVGs, both utilising the transform property, we need to apply the animations to separate elements. The <g> element in SVG can be used much like a div in HTML; we need to wrap each of our bubbles (which are already in a group) in a group tag.

<g> <g transform="translate(10 940)"> <circle cx="35" cy="35" r="35"/> </g> </g>

CSS has a powerful animation engine and really simple code in order to produce complex animations. We’ll start with moving the bubbles up the screen and changing their opacity in order to fade them in and out at the beginning and end of the animation.

@keyframes up { 0% { opacity: 0; } 10%, 90% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; transform: translateY(-1024px); } }

In order to create a wobbling effect, we simply need to move (or translate) the bubble left and right, by just the right amount – too much will cause the animation to look too jaunting and disconnected, while too little will go mostly unnoticed. Experimentation is key with when working with animation.

@keyframes wobble { 33% { transform: translateX(-50px); } 66% { transform: translateX(50px); } }

In order to apply the animation to our bubbles, we’ll be using the groups we used earlier and the help of nth-of-type to identify each bubble group individually. We start by applying an opacity value to the bubbles and the will-change property in order to utilise hardware acceleration.

.bubbles-large > g { opacity: 0; will-change: transform, opacity;} .bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) {...} ... .bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(10) {...}

We want to keep all the animation times and delays within a couple of seconds of each other and set them to repeat infinitely. Lastly, we apply the ease-in-out timing function to our wobble animation to make it look a little more natural.

.bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) { animation: up 6.5s infinite; } .bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) circle { animation: wobble 3s infinite ease-in-out; } ... bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(9) circle { animation: wobble 3s 275ms infinite ease-in-out; } .bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(10) { animation: up 6s 900ms infinite;}

08. Scrolling mouse

A subtle scrolling mouse animation can give direction to the user when they first land on a website. Although this can be accomplished using HTML elements and properties, we're going to use SVG as this is more suited to drawing.

Inside our SVG we need a rectangle with rounded corners and a circle for the element we’re going to animate, by using SVG we can scale the icon to any size we need.

<svg class="mouse" xmlns="..." viewBox="0 0 76 130" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYmid meet"> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <rect width="70" height="118" x="1.5" y="1.5" stroke="#FFF" stroke-width="3" rx="36"/> <circle cx="36.5" cy="31.5" r="4.5" fill="#FFF"/> </g> </svg>

Now we’ve created our SVG, we need to apply some simple styles in order to control the size and position of the icon within our container. We’ve wrapped a link around the mouse SVG and positioned it to the bottom of the screen.

.scroll-link { position: absolute; bottom: 1rem; left: 50%; transform: translateX(-50%); } .mouse { max-width: 2.5rem; width: 100%; height: auto; }

Next we’ll create our animation. At 0 and 20 per cent of the way through our animation, we want to set the state of our element as it begins. By setting it to 20% of the way through, it will stay still for part of the time when repeated infinitely.

@keyframes scroll { 0%, 20% { transform: translateY(0) scaleY(1); } }

We need to add in the opacity start point and then transform both the Y position and the vertical scale at the 100% mark, the end of our animation. The last thing we need to do is drop the opacity in order to fade out our circle.

@keyframes scroll { ... 10% { opacity: 1; } 100% { transform: translateY(36px) scaleY(2); opacity: 0.01; } }

Lastly we apply the animation to the circle, along with the ‘transform-origin’ property and the will-change property to allow hardware acceleration. The animation properties are fairly self-explanatory. The cubic-bezier timing function is used to first pull the circle back before dropping it to the bottom of our mouse shape; this adds a playful feel to the animation.

.scroll { animation-name: scroll; animation-duration: 1.5s; animation-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.650, -0.550, 0.250, 1.500); animation-iteration-count: infinite; transform-origin: 50% 20.5px; will-change: transform; }

09. Animated writing

Click to see the animation in action

As seen on: Garden Eight

Garden Eight View the code for the paths and text

Author: Steven Roberts

The Garden Eight website uses a common animation technique whereby text appears to be written out. To achieve the effect, we turn to SVG. To begin with, we’ll create the SVG. There are two approaches here: convert the text to paths in order to animate them or use SVG text. Both approaches have their pros and cons.

Start by creating our keyframe animation. The only function we need it to perform is to change the stroke-dashoffset. Now we’ve created our animation, we need to apply the values we want to animate from. We set the stroke-dasharray, which will create gaps in the stroke. We want to set our stroke to be a large enough value to cover the entire element, finally offsetting the dash by the length of the stroke.

The magic happens when we apply our animation. By animating the offset, we’re bringing the stroke into view – creating a drawing effect. We want the elements to draw one at a time, with some overlap between the end of drawing one element and beginning to draw the next. To achieve this we turn to Sass/SCSS and nth-of-type to delay each letter by half the length of the animation, multiplied by the position of that particular letter.

10. Flying birds

We start with completely straight vector lines, drawing each frame of our animation, depicting the bird in a different state of flight. We then manipulate the vector points and round the lines and edges. Finally, we put each frame into an equally sized box and place them side-by-side. Export the file as an SVG.

The HTML setup is really simple. We just need to wrap each bird in a container in order to apply multiple animations – one to make the bird fly and the other to move it across the screen.

<div class="bird-container"> <div class="bird"></div> </div>

We apply our bird SVG as the background to our bird div and choose the size we want each frame to be. We use the width to roughly calculate the new background position. The SVG has 10 cells, so we multiply our width by 10 and then alter the number slightly until it looks correct.

.bird { background-image: url('bird.svg'); background-size: auto 100%; width: 88px; height: 125px; will-change: background-position; } @keyframes fly-cycle { 100% { background-position: -900px 0; } }

CSS animation has a couple of tricks you may not be aware of. We can use the animation-timing-function to show the image in steps – much like flicking through pages in a notebook to allude to animation.

animation-name: fly-cycle; animation-timing-function: steps(10); animation-iteration-count: infinite; animation-duration: 1s; animation-delay: -0.5s;

Now we’ve created our fly cycle, our bird is currently flapping her wings but isn’t going anywhere. In order to move her across the screen, we create another keyframe animation. This animation will move the bird across the screen horizontally while also changing the vertical position and the scale to allow the bird to meander across more realistically.

Once we’ve created our animations, we simply need to apply them. We can create multiple copies of our bird and apply different animation times and delays.

.bird--one { animation-duration: 1s; animation-delay: -0.5s; } .bird--two { animation-duration: 0.9s; animation-delay: -0.75s; }

11. Cross my hamburger

This animation is used all over the web, turning three lines into a cross or close icon. Until fairly recently, the majority of implementations have been achieved using HTML elements, but actually SVG is much more suited to this kind of animation – there’s no longer a need to bloat your buttons code with multiple spans.

Due to the animatable nature and SVG and its navigable DOM, the code to accomplish the animation or transition changes very little – the technique is the same.

We start by creating four elements, be it spans inside of a div or paths inside of an SVG. If we’re using spans, we need to use CSS to position them inside the div; if we’re using SVG, this is already taken care of. We want to position lines 2 and 3 in the centre – one on top of another – while spacing lines 1 and 4 evenly above and below, making sure to centre the transform origin.

We’re going to rely on transitioning two properties: opacity and rotation. First of all, we want to fade out lines 1 and 4, which we can target using the :nth-child selector.

.menu-icon.is-active {element-type}:nth-child(1), .menu-icon.is-active {element-type}:nth-child(4) { opacity: 0; }

The only thing left to do is target the two middle lines and rotate them 45 degrees in opposite directions.

.menu-icon.is-active {element-type}:nth-child(2) { transform: rotate(45deg); } .menu-icon.is-active {element-type}:nth-child(3) { transform: rotate(-45deg); }

12. Chasing circles

The animated loading icon is made up of four circles. The circles have no fill, but have alternating stroke-colours.

<svg class="loader" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 340 340"> <circle cx="170" cy="170" r="160" stroke="#E2007C"/> <circle cx="170" cy="170" r="135" stroke="#404041"/> <circle cx="170" cy="170" r="110" stroke="#E2007C"/> <circle cx="170" cy="170" r="85" stroke="#404041"/> </svg>

In our CSS, we can set some basic properties to all of our circles and then use the :nth-of-type selector to apply a different stroke-dasharray to each circle.

circle:nth-of-type(1) { stroke-dasharray: 550; } circle:nth-of-type(2) { stroke-dasharray: 500; } circle:nth-of-type(3) { stroke-dasharray: 450;} circle:nth-of-type(4) { stroke-dasharray: 300; }

Next, we need to create our keyframe animation. Our animation is really simple: all we need to do is to rotate the circle by 360 degrees. By placing our transformation at the 50% mark of the animation, the circle will also rotate back to its original position.

@keyframes preloader { 50% { transform: rotate(360deg); } }

With our animation created, we now just need to apply it to our circles. We set the animation name; duration; iteration count and timing function. The ‘ease-in-out’ will give the animation a more playful feel.

animation-name: preloader; animation-duration: 3s; animation-iteration-count: infinite; animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;

At the moment, we have our loader, but all of the elements are rotating together at the same time. To fix this, we’ll apply some delays. We’ll create our delays using a Sass for loop.

@for $i from 1 through 4 { &:nth-of-type(#{$i}) { animation-delay: #{$i * 0.15}s; } }

Due to the delays, our circle now animates in turn, creating the illusion of the circles chasing each other. The only problem with this is that when the page first loads, the circles are static, then they start to move, one at a time. We can achieve the same offset effect, but stop the unwanted pause in our animation by simply setting the delays to a negative value.

animation-delay: -#{$i * 0.15}s;

Next page: More CSS animation examples to explore