🌀 Anime.js Learning – Day 3: Timelines & Chaining Animations

Hey everyone! 👋

Welcome to Day 3 of my journey learning Anime.js. Today was all about mastering timelines and chaining animations, which opens the door to building complex and beautifully sequenced effects.

🎯 Stage 3: Timelines & Chaining Animations

✅ Topics I Covered:

• anime.timeline() – Creating a sequence of animations
• Staggering animations using anime.stagger()
• Chaining multiple steps with different targets
• Nested animations – Animating grouped or layered elements one after another

💡 What I Learned

Today’s focus was on understanding how to build multi-step animation flows that are easier to manage and visually impactful. I learned:

• How to use .add() with timelines to structure animation steps.
• How to delay and stagger child elements for a smooth chain reaction effect.
• Creating interactive replay effects and entry animations using nested sequences.
• The beauty of timelines in creating story-like animations — like building a character from head to toe or an animated scene.

🧩 Practice Task

As a warm-up, I created a minor animation using timeline chaining:

Loading Effect

🎬 Main Project of the Day: Character Intro Scene

Animated Character Intro Scene

Features Included:

• Timed entry animation of character body parts
• Sequential movements: slide, rotate, scale, and fade-in
• A clean and smooth chained effect using Anime.js timelines

🧠 Practice Questions from Day 3

🟢 Basic:

1. Create a timeline that scales and fades in a box.
2. Animate a group of elements using anime.stagger() with different delays.
3. Create a looped loading animation using timelines.

🟡 Intermediate:

1. Chain an animation that rotates a square, then moves it up and fades it.
2. Use nested timelines to animate a complex figure with head, body, arms.
3. Animate an image gallery reveal one image at a time using staggering.

🔴 Advanced:

1. Make a button animation that plays a 3-step sequence on click.
2. Create a timeline that animates a scene like a sunrise: sky, sun, mountains.
3. Build a typing effect where each letter appears with staggered opacity.
4. Combine multiple timelines into a master one to animate an entire page layout.

🧾 Summary

Today’s lesson truly felt like levelling up in animation skills. Timelines allow more control and cleaner code, and chaining animations brings creativity and storytelling into front-end design. It was super exciting to see how sequential animations can create delightful UI effects.

📌 Connect with Me

• 🔗 GitHub: Anticoder03
• 🧠 Dev.to: @anticoder03
• 💼 LinkedIn: Ashish Prajapati

🎨 "Every animation begins with a single frame — keep pushing pixels and you'll paint motion itself."

— Anonymous

Let me know what you think or share your favorite Anime.js timeline tricks! 🚀

See you in Day 4! 💥