Inline SVG · hand-drawn · no libraries

Pelican Commuter

A white pelican pedals the boardwalk home at a little over three knots. Wheels, cranks, chain, legs and planks all read from one odometer, so nothing ever slips.

A white pelican pedaling a red cruiser bicycle along a seaside boardwalk Side view. The pelican sits upright on a red bicycle with fenders, a striped scarf trailing behind its neck. Behind it, a teal sea with a distant lighthouse and sailboat; in front, a dune with beach grass. Gulls drift across the sky.
Speed
3.3 kn
Cadence
27 rpm
Logged
0.000 nmi

Space pauses and resumes. Speed assumes a 26-inch wheel; distance is logged in nautical miles, since the rider is a seabird.

How it moves

One odometer
Every moving part reads from a single distance counter. Wheel angle is distance ÷ 58 (the tire radius in scene units), the cranks turn that ÷ 1.8 (the gear ratio), the chain links advance by crank angle × 18, and the planks slide by exactly the distance travelled — so the tires never slip, whatever the pace.
Legs solved every frame
The pedals go wherever the cranks put them. Each leg then solves for its own knee with two-bone inverse kinematics — the law of cosines on a 68-unit thigh and a 74-unit shin — so both webbed feet stay planted through the whole stroke.
Seven depths of parallax
Clouds drift at 5% of road speed, the headland at 12%, the sailboat at 15%, the swell at 30% and 45%, the railing and boardwalk at 100%, and the dune grass in front at 135%. Each strip is one tile drawn twice and wrapped with a modulo.
Night service
In dark mode the sun becomes a moon, the stars come out, the lighthouse blinks, and the dynamo lamp throws a cone of light down the planks. Same drawing, different tokens.