Living Grass Hero
2026
Explorations
Grass grows along your cursor path, then sinks back in the order you drew.
introduction
A build-in-public piece, made over about a week. I make the design calls and AI agents do the typing, so the loop is simple: move the cursor, name what is off, describe the next change.
Role
Design Lead / Motion design / UX/UI Design / Website / Prototyping
Year
2026
Category
Explorations
project details
I built exactly what the idea described and it still felt dead.
A crossfade on hover is technically grass appearing when you interact. Nothing about it suggested the grass noticed you. Anything that trailed the cursor read as light passing over a scene, and the spotlight version was a flashlight moving across grass that was already there.
Solution
I stopped building a reveal that follows the cursor and let the grass stay.
Once the surface kept what you traced, it stopped reading as light and started reading as cause. The exit is where the hours went: each spot grows, lingers, then dissolves back into the stone, oldest first, so the surface retreats rather than resets.
result
More than eight iterations in a week, with no GSAP and no Lenis.
Every curve and every millisecond was a call I had to make myself. I made the design calls and Claude Code did the typing, which is the only reason that many rounds fit in a week. I posted it before it was finished, flashlight versions and all.
Alive, not animated. I tested every version against those words.