Calligraphy Signature

About this style

Copperplate, also called English Roundhand, developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries and spread through engraved copybooks such as George Bickham's The Universal Penman, issued in parts from 1733 to 1741. It is written with a flexible pointed nib at a steep slant: pressing on a downstroke spreads the tines into a thick shade, and easing off on the upstroke leaves a fine hairline. Steel nibs, mass-produced in Birmingham in the 19th century, made the hand widely practiced. Calligraphers still use it for wedding stationery, signatures and luxury branding.

Make a 10-second close-up of a pointed pen writing a copperplate signature: ink swells on every downstroke, thins to hairlines on the upstrokes and pools where the pen pauses.

<inputs>
If I don't give you something, use the default and don't ask.
- Signature: Eloise Hart
- Line beneath: "Wedding stationery, written by hand"
- Small caps line: ELOISE HART STUDIO · EST. 2011 (fictional)
- Length: 10 seconds.
</inputs>

<direction>
- Palette: cream cotton laid paper #F4EDDF; wet ink #232838, blue-black with a glossy highlight, drying to iron-gall brown-black #261C16; desk walnut #3A2A1F, seen only beyond the sheet's deckled edges; nib steel #9EA3A8 with a brass flange #B08D57 on a black holder #151312; printed lines #4B3C31.
- Paper: the sheet fills x 140–1780, y 90–990, with deckled edges, laid lines (1px, 3% darker, every 7px horizontally), chain lines (every 120px vertically, 4%) and fine fibers, generated once at load, lit by a warm lamp from the upper left that falls off 12% toward the lower right. The pen and holder cast a soft shadow on the sheet.
- Copperplate, built properly: slant 55° from the baseline; baseline y 600; x-height 96px; ascenders and capitals reach 270px above the baseline, descenders 150px below; the signature spans about x 400 to 1520. Author it as centerline cubic Béziers in writing order, letter by letter on that slant grid: a capital E with an entry hairline, a small top loop and a shaded spine and bottom oval; l with a tall hairline loop and a shaded stem; o as a slanted oval shaded on its left side; i; s with a shaded body; e with a hairline loop; a capital H with two shaded stems and a looped hairline crossbar; a, r and t joined by hairline connectors. The i's dot, the t's cross and a long underline swash come last, as real signers add them. Every main downstroke is parallel to the slant, ovals are consistent, and downstrokes are evenly spaced.
- Pen physics: width w = 1.4px + 17px × p, where pressure p rises only on downstrokes, ramping in over the first 20% of a stroke and out over the last 25% (a swelled shade); upstrokes and connectors stay hairlines. The pen moves at 260px/s through shades and 800px/s through hairlines (scale both together if a beat needs it, keeping that ratio); between strokes it lifts and travels on a shallow arc at 1200px/s while its shadow slides 26px away and softens. Draw the nib at the writing point, angled to the slant, its two tines visibly spreading in proportion to w.
- Ink: stamp overlapping discs along each stroke into an ink layer, with slight density variation and a 1px darker rim along the edges of shades, where ink gathers as it dries. Where the pen stops (stroke ends, the i's dot, the end of the t's cross), a pool forms: a darker, slightly wider bead that keeps its wet highlight longest. Wet ink carries a thin glossy highlight along heavy shades that fades over 1.2 s after the pen passes, as the color shifts from wet to dry.
- Camera: a slow push from 1.0 to 1.06 that follows the pen loosely in x with a 0.4 s lag and ends framed on the whole signature, centered.
- Type: the line beneath in "Libre Caslon Text" italic, 34px, #4B3C31, centered on baseline y 830; the small caps line in Libre Caslon Text 400, 22px, uppercase, tracked 0.3em, centered on y 880.
- Premium: true copperplate construction, shades only on downstrokes, hairlines so fine they nearly vanish, ink that pools and dries. Cheap: a script font revealed by a left-to-right wipe, a uniform-width line, sparkles.
Banned: script fonts for the signature, uniform-width strokes, wipes or clip reveals, ink splatter, glitter, wax seals, roses, blur transitions, fast cuts, anything flashing more than 3 times per second.
</direction>

<structure>
- 0.0–0.6s: paper under the lamp; the pen descends into frame from the upper right, its shadow sharpening as the nib nears the paper.
- 0.6–1.8s: the capital E: entry hairline, top loop, a shaded spine swelling and thinning, the bottom oval ending in a small pool.
- 1.8–3.4s: "loise" in one connected run, hairline up and shade down; the i is left undotted.
- 3.4–3.7s: the pen lifts and travels to the H.
- 3.7–5.0s: the H's two shaded stems and looped crossbar, then "art" joined; the t's stem stays uncrossed.
- 5.0–5.4s: the pen dots the i, leaving a round pool, and crosses the t with a hairline that ends in a tiny bead.
- 5.4–5.9s: the swash: a long underline from beneath the E to past the t, with one shaded swell near its middle, ending in a hairline.
- 5.9–6.4s: the pen lifts away to the upper right, its shadow softening; the complete signature reads, its last strokes still wet.
- 6.4–7.6s: the last wet highlights dry off; the line beneath and the small caps line fade up 0.3 s apart, rising 6px.
- 7.6–10.0s: hold, completely still.
For other lengths, scale the pen speeds and keep every stroke in order; keep at least 1 s of hold.
</structure>

<build>
- One self-contained index.html (inline CSS and JS), a 1920×1080 (16:9) stage scaled to fit the window, designed for 60fps. No image, video, texture or model files: every shape and texture is generated in code.
- window.seek(t), t in seconds, computes every visual from t alone: no CSS transitions or CSS animations, no setTimeout/setInterval, no state carried between frames, randomness only from a seeded PRNG. Anything cumulative is solved analytically from t or precomputed once at load at a fixed step. Past the end, seek clamps to the last frame.
- Without ?render in the URL, drive seek from requestAnimationFrame so it plays in a browser (loop after a 1s end hold); with ?render, don't start that loop.
- Google Fonts via <link> are fine; await document.fonts.load() for each face before defining window.seek.
- Engine: Canvas 2D, repainting every frame from scratch, the backing store sized from CSS size × devicePixelRatio. Canvas won't fetch fonts itself, so the awaited loads matter. No libraries.
- At load, sample every stroke at 1px steps with its width, pressure and arrival time from the speed rules, and render the paper once; seek(t) draws the ink deposited up to t (with drying from each sample's age), then the pen and its shadow at their positions for t.
</build>

<check>
Before showing me, step through one frame per second (t = 0…10): screenshot each and look at it. Fix overlaps, clipped or cramped text, and anything off-style or Banned. Check shades fall only on downstrokes, every downstroke shares the 55° slant, hairlines stay visible at 1280×720, the i is dotted and the t crossed, pools appear only where the pen stopped, the 6 s frame shows the whole signature with the pen clear of it, and the letters read as Eloise Hart. Confirm seek(10) and seek(11) match, so the final frame holds.
</check>

Ours, and free to use under CC0: copy it, change it, ship it. No credit needed.

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