Animated Advent Calendar

December 1, 2009 8:12 AM

Animated Advent Calendar
'Tis the season for nested tables and animated gifs.

When I was a kid a really, really dug those advent calendars where each day in December you picked open a little cardboard door to reveal a piece of crappy chocolate shaped like a lord-a-leaping or something. A new treat each day.

So I built one on the web. Not with chocolates, with little animations.

I did one last year too, and I posted it to projects. This year's version uses a different animation style, a completely different layout, and was re-written from the ground up.

I haven't finished all the days yet, so maybe part of the fun will be tuning in to see if I fail! Whee! I hope you enjoy it.

posted by dirtdirt (9 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey on December 1, 2009: Animated Advent Calendar

yay! it's back!
posted by NikitaNikita at 9:16 AM on December 1, 2009

Looks fun. However: I tried clicking 25 without clicking 1 first (peeking!), but it went ahead and exposed the 1 animation anyway.
posted by Pants! at 9:18 AM on December 1, 2009

Yeah, any date you click on shows all the animations available up to that date. So, you still can't peek ahead, but you can get everything available in one click, OR you can click day by day. It seemed like the best compromise between people who would want to work their way up to the current date, and people who wanted to just see all available days at once. I gave some thought to 'you can turn on individual days out of sequence' but decided against it because, with the animations, part of what I like about it is how frenetic it gets towards the 25th.

I think that all makes more sense when it gets a few days in. Last year's works the same way, if you want to see the functionality I mean.
posted by dirtdirt at 9:52 AM on December 1, 2009

Nice! I like the layout and the individual animations. You have a good, clean drawing style. I also poked around on your site and enjoyed the "Dreems" project as well.
posted by Slothrop at 7:04 AM on December 6, 2009

Hey thanks, Slothrop. It's funny, that Dreems thing was the very first thing I posted on my own website. In 1998!
posted by dirtdirt at 6:52 AM on December 7, 2009

Nice! Is it weird that I am trying to make up a plot line where the animated images in your Advent calendar all work together now?
posted by misha at 5:23 PM on December 8, 2009

I'm still loving this. And I recognize the error of my previous comment - excellent design.
posted by Pants! at 10:58 PM on December 13, 2009

So far my favorite is the one for the 7th, with the flying hotdogs that alternate between ketchup and mustard toppings. Just zoomin' through that one spot.
posted by cobwebberies at 2:42 AM on December 15, 2009

Beautifully illustrated - just a little J. Otto (totally a compliment!), but with lots of distinctive touches. Lovely.
posted by mintcake! at 9:01 AM on December 16, 2009