Inspo.

The brief

Hairline showed that a line figure can answer a hand. Isocons has a thousand isometric icons and no motion. The ask: make them move, and if there is an effect, make it something the real object would do. A bolt arcs, a bottle fills. No sparkles.

Not there yet

The first figures moved too much and their lines were two widths: the outline was drawn as a thick stroke under the faces. It became a thin copy on top, masked to the shape, so every line in a figure is the same weight.

“not there yet”

Illustrations, not icons

On a real page these sit in heroes and feature cards, not in toolbars. So each one plays a short story on its own, and hover only takes over. The accent became Isocons' blue.

No dashed lines

Streams and dust were dashed. They read as construction lines and went. Things that happen now draw on as solid lines, or are left to the object: the bottle's pour is told by its water level alone. Every figure draws itself in, one pen, at a hand's pace.

Four strangers

Four fresh agents ran the skill with only its own files. Two hit the same bug: with the pointer held from the start, the drawing froze before it was drawn, and the checks still passed. Fixed in the engine and in the checks; the parts picture and the icon search came out of the same round.

Dots and planks

Review caught what the checks could not. The key turned by tilting the whole drawing, which bent every edge. Now it slides square and the lock's rim shows the turn. The beams became cones, and the cart's scuffs became a box that drops in.

“the key has a moving dots and the lines dont look straight”

Eight more strangers

Fresh agents ran the skill on what had never been tried: four new views, round icons, thirty-three faces, dots, tiny parts. The engine held on seven of eight views; the figures did not, and every one had passed its checks. What came out: an axis measured from the one straight edge a disc has, a check that fails when nothing visibly happens, and one that marks in red any line the original drawing never had.

Every line lands

Ryan's anatomy skill holds a rule we only kept by eye: every line ends on something. Isoform now checks it through the whole story. It found a broken surface pushed along the wrong axis on the bolt, scuffs floating behind the cart's wheels, and a flame left open at its root. The same study changed the effects: an outline steps aside while its glow runs, light only brightens a dark plate, and on paper a beam holds its shape the way ink does.

“for some of our icons we have randome loosed lines. that veers off when the animations starts”

What I'd keep

A second round of strangers got the mechanics right every time and the taste right one time in three. A script can tell you the figure works. Only looking tells you it reads. That is why every figure here was looked at by a person before it went up.