Dad is driving you home. Then Dad calls.

How it’s made

Every frame is drawn by code.

PICKUP is a single HTML file. About 1,500 lines of JavaScript draw every frame on a canvas: the rain on the windshield, the dashboard glow, the GPS screen and all 34 of the mimic’s teeth. There is no camera, no stock footage and no AI-generated art.

Every sound is generated live with the Web Audio API. The rain is filtered noise. The engine is two sawtooth waves a hair apart in pitch. Each voice is a string of short beeps, and the mimic’s beeps jump an octave at random. The four videos were rendered frame by frame from the same code.

// the mimic's grin: up to 17 teeth per row, top row hangs down, bottom row points up
const n = Math.round(lerp(5, 17, k));
for (let i = 0; i < n; i++){
  const u0 = i / n, u1 = (i + 1) / n, um = (i + .5) / n;
  const x0 = lerp(L, R, u0), x1 = lerp(L, R, u1), xm = lerp(L, R, um);
  c.beginPath(); c.moveTo(x0, qy(u0, top, cTop) - 3); c.lineTo(x1, qy(u1, top, cTop) - 3); c.lineTo(xm, qy(um, top, cTop) + h * .38); c.closePath(); c.fill(); c.stroke();
  c.beginPath(); c.moveTo(x0, qy(u0, top, cBot) + 3); c.lineTo(x1, qy(u1, top, cBot) + 3); c.lineTo(xm, qy(um, top, cBot) - h * .34); c.closePath(); c.fill(); c.stroke();
}