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svg-animations

Design
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SVG animation: SMIL, CSS keyframes, stroke path drawing, shape morphing, motion paths. Use when animating an SVG (spinners, animated logos, draw-in effects, morphing icons). Not for static SVG drawing or icon layout.

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Handcrafted SVG animation. Every SVG element is a DOM node you can style, animate, and script; the craft is picking the right animation layer and dodging the handful of gotchas below.

Read references/recipes.md when you need a ready-made pattern: loading spinner, animated checkmark, hamburger-to-X morph, motion along a path, gradient color shift, pulsing glow, or wave.

Choose the Animation Layer

SMIL (<animate>, <animateTransform>, <animateMotion>, <set>) lives inside the SVG markup and keeps working when the file is loaded via <img> or CSS background-image, where CSS and JS cannot reach. Prefer SMIL for self-contained assets (icons, logos); use CSS keyframes when the SVG is inlined and the animation should coordinate with the rest of the page.

Gotchas That Bite

  • transform-origin: center: SVG transforms default to the viewBox origin (0,0), not the element center. Set it explicitly in CSS, or pass explicit center coordinates in SMIL (from="0 25 25" to="360 25 25").
  • fill="freeze" on SMIL animations keeps the final state; without it the element snaps back to the start.
  • Shape morphing (SMIL values on d, or the CSS d property) interpolates only between paths with the same number and types of commands in the same order. If shapes differ, add invisible intermediate points to equalize.
  • Use path.getTotalLength() for exact lengths in stroke-drawing animations instead of guessing dash values.
  • Size with viewBox only; hardcoded width/height breaks resolution independence. Put gradients, filters, masks, and reusable shapes in <defs>.
  • stroke-linecap="round" makes line animations look polished.

The Stroke Drawing Trick

Set stroke-dasharray and stroke-dashoffset to the path length, then animate the offset to 0 so the path draws itself:

<path class="draw" d="M 20 100 C 20 50, 80 50, 80 100 S 140 150, 140 100"
      fill="none" stroke="#1a1a1a" stroke-width="3" />
<style>
  .draw {
    stroke-dasharray: 300;
    stroke-dashoffset: 300;
    animation: draw 2s ease forwards;
  }
  @keyframes draw {
    to { stroke-dashoffset: 0; }
  }
</style>

Stagger multiple paths with animation-delay.

SMIL Timing and Easing

Chain animations by id instead of hand-summing delays:

<animate id="first" attributeName="cx" to="150" dur="1s" fill="freeze" />
<animate attributeName="cy" to="150" dur="1s" begin="first.end" fill="freeze" />

begin also accepts click, 2s, other.end + 1s, and other.repeat(2). For easing, use calcMode="spline" with keySplines cubic-bezier control points per interval (ease-in-out is 0.42 0 0.58 1); the default is linear.

Performance and Accessibility

Animating transform and opacity is GPU-composited; animating d, points, or layout attributes triggers repaints, so use those sparingly on complex SVGs. will-change: transform helps the browser optimize compositing.

Add role="img" and <title>/<desc>, and honor reduced motion:

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  svg * {
    animation: none !important;
    transition: none !important;
  }
}