Birrd is named after a murmuration — the phenomenon where hundreds of birds move together in fluid, coordinated flight with no single leader. Each bird responds to its neighbors, creating a system that's flexible, intelligent, and constantly adapting. That's exactly how Birrd works as a collective: independent creatives, moving freely, joining forces when it matters.

Early tests of a true flocking simulation were too computationally heavy, even in 2D. Scaling that approach to 3D would have compromised the detail and performance required for the website, so I developed a lighter approximation instead.

Points distributed across the surface of a sphere are transformed through layered noise and array operations, creating continuous flock-like motion without simulating every bird.



Further R&D explored how the flock could respond to interaction. When disturbed, its behaviour feels emergent, like touching something alive.

For the website, I created a lightweight branch of the system and optimized it for desktop and mobile.

One of the key deliverables was the Birrd Flock tool — a browser-based generator that allows the client to produce publish-ready brand material without specialist software. They can enter different text, adjust its motion and particle behaviour, change colours, add a static communication layer, and work across multiple aspect ratios.

The main technical challenge was vector export. Because the particle positions are calculated on the GPU through shaders, they are inaccessible for direct SVG generation.

On export, the tool captures the selected animation frame and reconstructs its visible form as a field of points in two-dimensional space. This produces a crisp, scalable SVG interpretation of any moment in the animation.




The resulting tool connects generative motion with a static layer for typography, information, or additional graphics. The client can compose and export motion, raster, and vector assets directly in the browser.