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I had so much fun working on this challenge and exploring how we interact with media on a daily basis. It pushed me to rethink familiar interfaces from scratch. Here is what I came up with:
SOMA / Control, Reimagined
Most video players force your eyes down to a rigid bar at the bottom of the screen, pulling you out of the moment every time you want to take control. SOMA changes that by turning playback into a smooth, circular gesture right where your attention already is.
Built around how our hands naturally move, SOMA gathers timeline scrubbing, scene previews, audio, and settings into one intuitive dial. Whether you are clicking with a mouse or guiding with a thumb, you stay inside the story while moving through time effortlessly.
Let me know how you feel about this in the comments! 😊
Getting your eyes off the rigid bottom bar is a real problem worth solving. Nice exploration.
Thanks @Denis Turbin! Glad the idea resonates 😊
Love what you’ve done here, Megi!
Thank you so much@Zyra Hoxha! Really appreciate it ☺️
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WILDER — Nature in Motion
WILDER is an immersive, nature-inspired video player skin built for Video.js v10.
I wanted to move beyond the traditional video player experience and create something that feels like entering a living forest. Inspired by wildlife, birds, trees, waterfalls and natural landscapes, WILDER transforms the viewing interface into an interactive nature environment.
The design combines a richly illustrated forest world, custom nature-inspired controls, immersive visuals and smooth interactions while maintaining the essential functionality of a modern video player.
My focus was to bring together creativity, usability and accessibility in a unique viewing experience.
Built with: Video.js v10, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and custom interactive UI elements.
Entering a living forest instead of watching a video, nice mood.
I wanted a video player that felt like it belonged in a museum, so I designed IWATO as a display case where every part of the case is a control.
It's part of a fictional Japanese game I came up with, built around the myth of Ama-no-Iwato, the rock door the sun goddess hid behind. So before the film plays, it waits behind that door. You press the bronze mirror and the door slides open.
The seek bar is a handscroll that unrolls as the film plays, with a painting for each chapter. The seals above it stamp red as you reach each chapter, and you can tap them to jump. The volume is a crest you turn like a dial, the captions button traces 字 in brushstrokes, and every press lets off a little fox-fire.
I made sure it works for everyone too: it's fully usable with a keyboard, passes accessibility checks, and tones down the animations if you have reduced motion on.
I painted the scrolls in Recraft, rendered the museum film manually in Blender, aided with Claude on Video.js v10.
A museum display case where every part of the case is a control is a wonderful idea, and tying it to the Ama-no-Iwato myth gives IWATO real depth. I'd love your take on Geiger if you get a minute ☢
Tactile — Paper Key: a Video.js v10 skin you can press.
Tactile treats the player as a desk object, not a screen overlay. Before drawing any UI, we modelled a small keypad in Blender: paper-white keys with an ink rim, a ribbed fader cap and a black status display. We pressed it, lit it, and flattened it piece by piece into CSS. Keys latch (1 px down, with a 2 px accent rim), faders scrub, and one display pill always says what the player is doing: PLAY 1.0×, PAUSED, LOADING or END. Play is the only orange key and everything else stays matte, so the dock reads the same over bright snow and a night street. Three glazes and one accent token let it fit someone else's site.
Keyboard-first with a visible ink focus ring, 44 px targets, Esc closes every menu, forced colors and reduced motion supported. Source (Apache 2.0): github.com/promoparkllc/tactile-paper-key
