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Christopher Kade
Christopher Kade

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Developing the Star Wars opening crawl in HTML/CSS

Even though Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a divisive movie (which is not the point of this article, I promise), it inspired me to develop the most useless thing of all: the franchise's famous opening crawl using solely HTML, CSS and a little bit of Javascript (but for a cool reason).

The crawl contains 5 essential elements:

  • The background
  • The intro phrase
  • The logo
  • The text
  • The music

I'll simply go through the necessary steps, from building each element to some final touches such as adding John Williams' famous track.

Step 1: Creating the background

Let's do something a bit more original than adding a picture of space. Let's generate stars randomly !

JS:

// Sets the number of stars we wish to display
const numStars = 100;

// For every star we want to display
for (let i = 0; i < numStars; i++) {
  let star = document.createElement("div");  
  star.className = "star";
  var xy = getRandomPosition();
  star.style.top = xy[0] + 'px';
  star.style.left = xy[1] + 'px';
  document.body.append(star);
}

// Gets random x, y values based on the size of the container
function getRandomPosition() {  
  var y = window.innerWidth;
  var x = window.innerHeight;
  var randomX = Math.floor(Math.random()*x);
  var randomY = Math.floor(Math.random()*y);
  return [randomX,randomY];
}
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CSS:

body {
  margin: 0;
  background-color: black;
}

.star {
  position: absolute;
  width: 1px;
  height: 1px;
  background-color: white;
}
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Tada ! We now have a beautiful background to display the crawl on.

It looks like this (note that the stars on this picture are very hard to see as they are one pixel wide, but they'll look good once you actually implement them, you have my word):

space

Step 2: Adding the famous intro phrase

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

Everyone has already heard, seen or whispered this phrase in their lifetime, so let's add it (with the necessary effects).

HTML:

...

<section class="intro">
  A long time ago, in a galaxy far,<br> far away....
</section>
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CSS:

...

/* Center it, set the color, size and hide the text */
.intro {
    position: absolute;
    top: 45%;
    left: 50%;
    z-index: 1;
    animation: intro 6s ease-out 1s;
    color: rgb(75, 213, 238);
    font-weight: 400;
    font-size: 300%;
    opacity: 0;
}

@keyframes intro {
    0% {
        opacity: 0;
    }
    20% {
        opacity: 1;
    }
    90% {
        opacity: 1;
    }
    100% {
        opacity: 0;
    }
}
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Result:

intro

Step 3: Displaying the logo

The logo is vital to this opening sequence, here's how I added it.

HTML:

...

<section class="logo">
    <!-- SVG GOES HERE -->
</section>
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The SVG being a very long file, I have uploaded it here for you to copy and paste.

CSS:

...

/* Set the animation & hide the logo */
.logo {    
    position: absolute;
    top: 20%;
    left: 45%;
    z-index: 1;
    margin: auto;
    animation: logo 9s ease-out 9s;
    opacity: 0;
}

.logo svg {
    width: inherit;
}

/* Scale the logo down and maintain it centered */
@keyframes logo {
    0% {
        width: 18em;        
        transform: scale(2.75);
        opacity: 1;
    }
    50% {
        opacity: 1;
        width: 18em;      
    }
    100% {
        opacity: 0;
        transform: scale(0.1);
        width: 18em;        
    }
}
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And there we go, our beautifully animated logo:

logo

Step 4: Adding the scrolling text

It's probably the most essential part of the crawl but it's rather easy to implement.

HTML:

...

<!-- Change the text to your liking -->
<div id="board">  
  <div id="content">
    <p id="title">Episode I</p>
    <p id="subtitle">THE CODER'S MENACE</p>
    <br>
    <p>Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic as Christopher Kade finishes studying to become a master in his trade.</p>    
    <!-- Add as many paragraphs as you want -->
    <!-- And make it cheesy ! -->
  </div>  
</div>
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CSS:

...

p {
  color: #FFFF82;
}

/* Set the font, lean the board, position it */
#board {
  font-family: Century Gothic, CenturyGothic, AppleGothic, sans-serif;
  transform: perspective(300px) rotateX(25deg);
  transform-origin: 50% 100%;
  text-align: justify;
  position: absolute;
  margin-left: -9em;
  font-weight: bold;
  overflow: hidden;
  font-size: 350%;
  height: 50em;
  width: 18em;
  bottom: 0;
  left: 50%;
}

#board:after {
  position: absolute;
  content: ' ';
  bottom: 60%;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  top: 0;
}

/* Set the scrolling animation and position it */
#content {
  animation: scroll 100s linear 16s;
  position: absolute;
  top: 100%;
}

#title, #subtitle {
  text-align: center;
}

@keyframes scroll {
    0% {
        top: 100%;
    }
    100% {
        top: -170%;
    }
}
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And there we go !

text

Final touch: the music

What would Star Wars be without its music?

Since we have timed our animations in advance, it should be a piece of cake !

First, download the following .mp3 file and add it to your project's assets.

Then, in our HTML file, add:

<audio preload="auto" autoplay>
  <source src="@/assets/audio/Star_Wars_original_opening_crawl_1977.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
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Which preloads the music as the page is loaded and plays it automatically.

And voilà, everything should work as expected.

Final thoughts

You can find the finished product on this codepen (without the music).

It's always fun to work on something random to explore the possibilities of vanilla web technologies. I hope this was a call to action for some of you and would love to hear all about it in the comments.

Thanks for reading,

Christopher Kade

Top comments (21)

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diogomqbm_ profile image
Diogo Mafra

Nice post! Had to do some changes but I had some fun doing this!
Thank you!

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christopherkade profile image
Christopher Kade

I'm glad you liked it !

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robosnod profile image
robosnod

This is pretty amazing. How could I set the canvas size to fit the center of my website? I don't see any place in the code where it defines the width. If I wanted it to be 980px, where do I add that? Do I add it in the BG CSS?

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Love this!

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hydrogen2oxygen profile image
Peter

The final touch would be a complete Star Wars movie made with JS, hehehe!

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xelaflash profile image
xelaflash

Awesome men! I'm a learning webdev and this is a fun and good exercise.
I learned some new stuff in js and css thanks to you. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

You made my (hangover) day ! 😃

Thanks men, do not hesitate to share other stuffs like that

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brianmituka profile image
Brian Mituka

I've been thinking about this a lot. Nice one!

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toshimitsusakai profile image
坂井 俊光

It's so nice!

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keanamaral profile image
keanamaral • Edited

TTTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKK YYYYYOUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!
So much Chris!!!! I was so looking to be able to do this...THANKS! Got it working on my html

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guic1978 profile image
Guilherme Reis

That´s awesome man.

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smgardner59 profile image
scott m gardner

What fun!

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francisco profile image
Francisco M. Delgado

This was awesome, following and can't wait for more!

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praveen075 profile image
praveen075

Hahaha cool stuff . Loved it .

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nattyxd profile image
Nathaniel Baulch-Jones

This is so awesome

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kinkuraj profile image
Kinkuraj Sahoo

Nice one. Worth trying it. :)

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rapidtables1 profile image
rapidtables

Awesome Christopher, Amazing Work.. I have tested on HTML Formatter and loved it

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