Skip to content

No.118 · Backgrounds

Light Leak

The look of a roll of film that let some light in: warm leaks bloom from the edges — pale at the heart, burning to red at the fringe — swell and fade, while grain crawls, dust and hairline scratches flash past and the frame weaves in the gate, at a true 24fps. The pointer near an edge lets light in there.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Warm

Build a WebGL film-stock background in one fragment shader. Base: a dark frame (two near-black tones, faintly lighter off-centre where a subject would be). Leaks: three blooms anchored just outside the left, right and top edges, each a Gaussian of distance stretched along its edge and torn by fbm noise (radius + 0.55·(fbm − 0.5)), each multiplied by its own slow noise clock (smoothstep of fbm(t·0.05–0.07)) so they swell, drift and vanish independently. Colour the summed leak by intensity: the theme's fringe colour at the weak edge, through its main colour, to a hot near-white at the heart, and screen it over the base. Film: run the loop at 24fps. Each frame: a sub-pixel gate weave (random offset of the sample position), ±3% flicker, fresh grain (hash noise at ~1.4px, strongest in mid-tones), a hairline vertical scratch held for three frames about one time in seven, and up to two dark dust specks. A lens vignette finishes it. Start the clock 20s in so the first frame already has leaks. The pointer near an edge (within 32% of the frame) adds a fourth leak anchored on the nearest edge, stronger the closer it is, eased in. Render at 70% resolution (50% on touch, no pointer leak), paused offscreen and in hidden tabs; a CSS radial gradient stands in without WebGL; reduced motion draws a single still frame with no weave. Selected variant — Warm: theme="warm": red fringe → orange body → hot white, classic expired-film leaks.

Notes

Interaction
Bring the pointer toward an edge to let light leak in there.
Motion
24fps film cadence; leaks breathe on 15–20s noise clocks; scratches and dust are random per frame.
Accessibility
The canvas is aria-hidden and decorative; overlay content sits above it. There are no rapid flashes — flicker is ±3%. Reduced motion shows one still frame.
Responsive
The shader works in aspect-corrected coordinates, so leaks keep their shape at any size.
On touch
No pointer leak on touch; the film runs the same at lower resolution.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components