Artist-owned opening
The original canvas fills the first viewport. Two responsive crops of that same work drift subtly with the pointer, creating movement without inventing new featured art.
Build guide
Ember
An Eden Labs viewing room where blue-black surfaces, carved Marcellus titles, and image-sampled mineral warmth keep the studio atmospheric but precise.
How it was made
One visual idea, held from the first sketch to the last media query.
Nocturnal laboratory
Blue-black canvas and warm ivory come from the Eden Labs source. Smoke rose, low umber, and mineral blue appear only where the artwork gives them a reason.
Overlapping canvas wall
An asymmetric twelve-column composition changes scale and depth between works, then resolves into a deliberate single-column sequence on narrow screens.
Calm fallback
Reduced motion freezes the crop fragments, imagery stays fully reserved with Next Image, and the work remains legible without hover or pointer input.
Three release passes
Every pass ran on real desktop and phone renders, and only counted when it fixed something you could see.
Source fidelity
Restored the Eden Labs Marcellus and Alegreya Sans pairing and its blue-black viewing-room palette while preserving the approved compact title scale.
Gallery choreography
Reduced the strongest negative overlap and made reveal fallbacks visible, preserving the layered wall during fast scrolling and observer failure.
Mobile and access
Removed one fragment on small screens, installed the native hamburger, and verified About, Guide, focus, contrast, reduced motion, and overflow at phone width.
A reusable recipe
Write the scene before the palette. Choose what visitors should physically feel, then set color, type, motion, and material around it.
The artwork stays in charge. Code and procedure can set the atmosphere, but they never stand in for the work.
Reduced motion, focus states, and a stable fallback ship first. Spectacle comes last.