Make words move the way they mean

Write the word and doodle the motion

Write one word per page. Around it, draw what it should do: an arrow and "stretch" for Slow, burst lines and "BOOM" for Explode, drips under Melt, a zigzag for Glitch, little wings for Fly.

Short words work best. The reel used words of three to seven letters. Take a straight-on photo of each page.

Explode

Melt

Ask Claude to design the motion first

Before any code, get one line per word describing what the letters do, when, and in what colours. This is where the idea lives: the motion should act out the meaning, so "Explode" explodes and "Slow" takes its time.

Read the lines and change anything that does not feel like the word.

Here are photos of handwritten words with doodles showing how they should move. For each word, write one line: WORD: what the letters do, the timing in frames at 30 fps (3 seconds is 90 frames), the background and letter colours. The motion must act out the meaning of the word. Use the doodles as hints.

Have Claude build the animation

Ask for a single web page that plays each effect in a 9:16 frame and loops. Claude can build it as an artifact in claude.ai or as a file you open in your browser.

If you downloaded the skill, Claude starts from its template, which already contains all five effects from the reel.

Build these as one self-contained HTML page with plain CSS and JavaScript. A 9:16 stage (573 x 1019 px) scaled to fit the window, one button per word, each effect 3 seconds at 30 fps then looping. Animate each letter separately. Use Bricolage Grotesque from Google Fonts. Use a fixed pseudo-random function rather than Math.random() so every play looks the same. Add a key that hides the buttons so I can screen-record it.

Learn the five tricks

Slow: the letters drift apart and stretch over the whole 3 seconds with an ease-in-out, with two faint copies trailing behind.

Explode: the letters pop in one by one, shake, then fly apart at about one second with a flash, a gold shock ring and sparks that fall with gravity.

Melt: an SVG filter blurs the letters and then snaps the edges hard again, which makes them merge like liquid. Drips grow under each letter and a puddle rises from the bottom.

Glitch: the word is drawn in red, cyan and white slightly offset, sliced into seven horizontal bands that jump sideways in three short bursts, with scanlines on top.

Fly: each letter grows flapping wings and takes off in turn, speeding up as it climbs past drifting clouds.

Tweak it until it feels right

Timing is most of the effect. If the explosion feels late, move it earlier. If Melt looks too thick, lower the blur. Ask for one change at a time and replay.

To try your own word in an effect, type it into the page or ask Claude to swap it.

Make the explosion happen at frame 25 instead of 34, make the sparks smaller, and keep everything else the same.

Design a new word

Every effect is built from the same few blocks: moving letters one at a time, gravity, particles, a blur filter, offset copies, and shapes attached to letters. Ask Claude to combine them for a new word.

Add a new effect for the word "Shiver": the letters should tremble as if cold, with a frosty blue background and small breath clouds. Same 3-second beat, same structure as the other effects.

Record it

Open the page full screen, hide the buttons and screen-record it (QuickTime on a Mac, OBS anywhere), then crop to the 9:16 frame. Put your handwritten page next to it and you have the reel.

If you code, the same effects port directly to Remotion, which renders a clean MP4 frame by frame. The reel was rendered that way.