Senior Creative Developer — Interactive Single Page Sprint (Immediate Start, Contract)

The Project We're building a single, continuous scroll-driven article for an online magazine. It's one unbroken scroll experience across six illustrated sections, where each section has its own visual system, animation logic, and hand-tuned transition into the next. The first section is complete and has established the scroll rhythm, layout system, and section-to-section handoff pattern. Five sections remain, and we need a specialist to help us finish them at the level the first section set. This is precise, high-craft work: the kind of piece where a few pixels off breaks the illusion. If you've built award-caliber interactive editorial, immersive brand storytelling, or scroll-native art experiences — and you can move fast without losing that precision — we want to hear from you now. What You'll Build Each remaining section demands the same category of work the completed section required: - Scroll as the animation timeline. Nothing plays on a timer. Scroll position drives path drawing, element pick-up and settle, interaction unlock, and section completion states. You'll author and tune these mappings by hand. - Custom SVG/canvas path work. Trails and motion paths built point-by-point from control points — with entirely different path shapes per breakpoint — rendered with textured, hand-drawn brush effects (hundreds of individual marks along a spline) that draw themselves in sync with scroll. - Per-breakpoint choreography. Interactive elements sit at different coordinates, trigger at different scroll percentages, and settle into different final layouts on desktop vs. mobile. Every value is tuned in-browser against Figma comps. - Section handoffs. Each section's exit state is the next section's entry state — scroll position, layout shifts, and visual continuity must align exactly. You'll be working within an established dependency chain, not parallel independent blocks. - Interaction design in the details. Hover/tap states tied to specific lines of text, staggered easing so elements read as choreography rather than stacking, and layout logic that extends beyond the standard article column. What You'll Also Own - Cross-device and cross-browser testing — iPhone, iPad, Android, varied desktop sizes; you know that scroll-driven canvas and masking behave differently in Safari vs. Chrome, and you've solved for it before. Accessibility on unconventional layouts — readable content order for screen readers despite fragmented visual layouts, keyboard-accessible interactions, reduced-motion fallbacks with considered static end states, labeled audio controls, contrast across every background. - Performance — high-res textures, long paths, and multiple canvas layers scrolling smoothly on mid-range devices. The site currently scores 97; you'll keep it there. - Resilience — resize and orientation changes that recalculate paths and element positions without breaking state. You're a Strong Fit If You Have - 5+ years building interactive web experiences, with a portfolio heavy on motion, animation, and scroll-driven editorial or narrative work (Awwwards/FWA-caliber, longform journalism interactives, digital art commissions, or equivalent) - Deep fluency with scroll-linked animation (GSAP/ScrollTrigger, custom scroll systems, or equivalent), SVG path manipulation, and canvas rendering - A demonstrated eye for translating designer comps into pixel-accurate, motion-accurate builds — and the patience to tune values in-browser until they feel right - Experience shipping responsive animation systems where desktop and mobile are genuinely different choreographies, not scaled versions of one layout Working knowledge of accessibility for animation-heavy pages (prefers-reduced-motion, focus management, semantic content order) - Comfort joining a project mid-stream: reading an established codebase and pattern language, matching its conventions, and extending it rather than rebuilding it Nice to Have - Experience with editorial - Audio integration in scroll experiences - Familiarity with Figma dev workflows Logistics Start: IMMEDIATELY. This is an active sprint with a live client timeline. - Structure: You'll work alongside our existing two engineering leads — the completed section is the reference implementation and the handoff pattern is established. Sections are built sequentially by design, so this role is about depth and velocity within that chain, not parallel workstreams. - Compensation: Competitive contract rate, commensurate with experience.