araneae

"Araneae — a field study": a one-page concept longread about a spider, in six chapters, played on one fixed WebGL stage and driven by the scroll. While an orb web is spun stroke by stroke in the preloader, a fully procedural spider is built in three.js: a furred body of some 200,000 instanced hairs lit like fibres, eight seven-segment legs posed by inverse kinematics, palps, folding fangs and eight eyes. After "Enter the lair" it lowers itself on a silk thread out of the dark onto a sheet web, which gives under its weight and bounces, and the title ARANEAE resolves letter by letter in thin condensed type. Once it stands, the scroll unlocks: it cuts a ragged hole through its own floor and dives head first into older layers of web, past wrapped prey hanging on their lines, while a second spider runs across the lens, belly towards you; down there the light gives up and your cursor becomes the only torch. Then the camera rises to its face and the eight eyes throw your light back, drops beneath the fangs as they unfold, circles the legs while chapter 04's text drifts past behind them and the fine hairs part around your cursor, and finally turns your cursor into a fly that flies into a snare: the web rings, the spider waits, and strikes. A corner HUD counts the chapter, the depth and the progress; the film is finished with bloom, grain, flicker, vignette and a split-tone grade, with two lights to switch between (Deep blue and Silver, key L). A demo mode plays the whole page by itself in about 37 seconds for screen recording. Includes a phone layout, touch, reduced motion and frame-exact capture hooks.