How I stumbled upon Sam’s work
So I was browsing design portfolios last Tuesday night, coffee gone cold like always. You know how it goes – clicking through hundreds of same-looking sites. Then boom, this crazy interactive page loads with floating 3D shapes reacting to my cursor. Immediately thought “who made this witchcraft?”

My deep dive begins
Started digging through the source code like a mad archaeologist. Took me three hours just to find the creator’s name buried in some minified JavaScript. Turns out it was Sam Hutchinson. Never heard of him before but holy hell, that animation was smooth as butter.
Tracking down his top projects
Couldn’t find any official “top 5” list anywhere. Had to piece it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Checked:
- Design award sites (those fancy trophies mean something right?)
- Code repositories where devs post their work
- Old conference talks from like 2020
Kept seeing the same projects popping up everywhere. Took screenshots, compared notes, made a friggin’ spreadsheet. Felt like I was solving a murder mystery.
Sam’s top 5 bangers
After cross-referencing everything, these kept rising to the top:
- The Liquid Navigation thing – menus that flow like water when you hover
- Architectural Visualizer 2.0 – lets you walk through unbuilt skyscrapers
- Soundscaper project – turns city noise into music in real time
- VR sculpture garden – digital art you can “touch” with VR gloves
- Data cave installation – entire room reacts to your heartbeat
The messy part
Here’s where it got weird. Tried running one of his older prototypes and my computer fan started screaming like a jet engine. Looked at the code – dude used like five different animation libraries in one project! Felt like opening a car hood and finding squirrels running on treadmills.

No documentation anywhere either. Had to email some obscure dev forum to even understand how to launch the dang thing. Got one reply from a guy in Finland who worked with Sam in 2018. Small world.
Why these projects slap
After testing each one (and crashing my browser 11 times), here’s what makes them special:
- Uses tech in ways nobody expects – like turning phone sensors into art tools
- Performance is insane considering how heavy the graphics are
- Always puts user experience first – even complicated stuff feels intuitive
My big takeaway
Spent two whole weekends on this rabbit hole. Wife thinks I’m nuts. But watching how Sam mixes art and tech? Absolute gold. Gonna try recreating that liquid menu effect for my cousin’s bakery site. Already crashed my test server twice. Worth it.