Stevan Živadinović is creating a story: Hobo Lobo of Hamelin. The impressive part is how he’s doing it – with lots of layers and HTML/CSS. It’s one of the more complex examples of parallax I’ve seen on the web. He obviously put a lot of time into planning everything out and I’m sure took a good bit of time to fine tune the code. It’s a work in progress with two chapters up now:

Hobo Lobo of Hamelin

If you view the page without any CSS formatting, you can see how he broke the layers down, which is very similar to how it would be done in traditional animation: a background plate with the far away scene, another plate with objects closer to the “camera,” and separate layers for the individual characters that would move independent of the surroundings. Stevan takes it to another level, by having not just two or three layers, but five or more, adding depth to already well-rendered illustrations.

This is a great example of how limitations can help push your creativity and not settle for what’s already been done.