The Lab: small things I build when I get curious

Sometimes I see something and wonder “how does that actually work?” Instead of just reading about it, I build a small version of it. The Lab is where those little experiments live. None of them were planned as projects; each one started with a question and turned into something you can play with.

Everything here is plain JavaScript and HTML Canvas, with no libraries, because writing it from scratch is the fun part, and the best way I know to really understand something.

🌀 Flow field I got curious about those flowing, hair-like generative art pieces. It turns out they’re thousands of particles following an invisible “wind map” made from noise. So I wrote the noise function by hand and let 2,000 particles drift through it. You can play with the speed, colours and line thickness, and every run draws a different picture.

🎵 Sort-sonic In college, sorting algorithms were just diagrams to me. I wanted to see the difference, and then I thought, why not hear it too? Every comparison plays a note, so bubble sort sounds busy and messy while merge sort sounds rhythmic and calm. It started as a Python project (Algo-Sonic) and I rebuilt it for the browser.

🧩 Maze I wanted to watch how a computer builds a maze and then finds its way out. It carves the maze step by step, then searches for the shortest path live, cell by cell, so you can see it “think”.

🔴 Bounce The simplest one, and probably the most fun. Click anywhere to drop a ball, and they fall, bounce and bump into each other. Turn gravity up or down, make them bouncier, hit “Rain” and then “Shake”.

These little experiments are how I learn, and they’ve made me much better at the things clients actually need: smooth animations, interactive moments and pages that feel alive.

🔗 Play with them yourself: ankitagaikwad.vercel.app/lab.html

#CreativeCoding #GenerativeArt #InteractiveDesign #JavaScript #Canvas #Animation #WebDesign #FrontEnd #MotionDesign #WebDevelopment