Blowing bubbles css animation

The CSS bubble animation that features on 7UP is a beautiful example of carrying a brand theme through into the website design. The animation consists of a few elements: the SVG ‘drawing’ of the bubbles and then two animations applied to each bubble.

via Gfycat

The first animation changes the opacity of the bubble and moves it vertically in the view box; the second creates the wobbling effect for added realism. The offsets are handled by targeting each bubble and applying a different animation duration and delay.

In order to create our bubbles we’ll be using SVG. In our SVG we create two layers of bubbles: one for the larger bubbles and one for the smaller bubbles. Inside the SVG we position all of our bubbles at the bottom of the view box.

<g class="bubbles-large" stroke-width="7">
  <g transform="translate(10 940)">
  <circle cx="35" cy="35" r="35"/>
  </g>
  ...
</g>
<g class="bubbles-small" stroke-width="4">
  <g transform="translate(147 984)">
  <circle cx="15" cy="15" r="15"/>
  </g>
</g>
  ...
</g>

In order to apply two separate animations to our SVGs, both utilising the transform property, we need to apply the animations to separate elements. The <g> element in SVG can be used much like a div in HTML; we need to wrap each of our bubbles (which are already in a group) in a group tag.

<g>
  <g transform="translate(10 940)">
  <circle cx="35" cy="35" r="35"/>
  </g>
</g>

CSS has a powerful animation engine and really simple code in order to produce complex animations. We’ll start with moving the bubbles up the screen and changing their opacity in order to fade them in and out at the beginning and end of the animation.

@keyframes up {
  0% {
  opacity: 0;
  }
  10%, 90% {
  opacity: 1;
  }
  100% {
  opacity: 0;
  transform: translateY(-1024px);
  }
}

In order to create a wobbling effect, we simply need to move (or translate) the bubble left and right, by just the right amount – too much will cause the animation to look too jaunting and disconnected, while too little will go mostly unnoticed. Experimentation is key with when working with animation.

@keyframes wobble {
  33% {
  transform: translateX(-50px);
  }
  66% {
  transform: translateX(50px);
  } }

In order to apply the animation to our bubbles, we’ll be using the groups we used earlier and the help of nth-of-type to identify each bubble group individually. We start by applying an opacity value to the bubbles and the will-change property in order to utilise hardware acceleration.

.bubbles-large > g {
  opacity: 0;
will-change: transform, opacity;}
.bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) {...}
...
.bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(10) {...}

We want to keep all the animation times and delays within a couple of seconds of each other and set them to repeat infinitely. Lastly, we apply the ease-in-outtiming function to our wobble animation to make it look a little more natural.

.bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) {
  animation: up 6.5s infinite; }
.bubbles-large g:nth-of-type(1) circle {
  animation: wobble 3s infinite ease-in-out; }
...
bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(9) circle {
  animation: wobble 3s 275ms infinite ease-in-out; }
.bubbles-small g:nth-of-type(10) {
animation: up 6s 900ms infinite;}