Proximity scale
The pointer carries a radius. Filled dots inside it shrink in proportion to how close they are, uncovering the empty socket underneath — the grid keeps its shape, the fill just recedes. Transform only, so it stays smooth across all 73 dots. Move across the field slowly.
Spring wake
Every dot runs its own spring toward the pointer rather than a fixed transition, so the fill peels open at the leading edge and closes behind with a fraction of overshoot — a wake rather than a spotlight. Stiffness varies dot to dot, which frays the trailing edge instead of leaving a clean circle. Move fast, then stop.
Wipe clear
Cumulative. Fill the pointer passes over stays gone, like wiping a fogged window, and the count falls with it — the statistic becomes something you act on rather than something you read. Each dot costs one class and one transition, so there is no frame loop here at all.
Column sweep
Distance is measured on the horizontal axis only, so whole columns recede together and the gesture reads as a vertical wipe across the field — more editorial, less cursor-toy. The ten column values sit on the container and the dots inherit their own, so a frame is ten style writes instead of seventy-three.
Magnet
The pointer displaces the whole grid, filled and unfilled alike: dots slide out along the vector from the cursor and ease back as it passes. The fill only dims slightly — this one is about the field bending, not the count dropping. Good if the section wants life without implying the number can be undone.
Handoff
The fill doesn't leave, it moves. A dot under the pointer hands its fill to an unlit dot on the far side of the field, ahead of the direction of travel, so the count stays at 73 however long you push it around. The most honest of the ten, and the one with an argument in it.
Threshold
Discrete rather than continuous. Crossing a dot's centre snaps it off in 140ms and nudges its four neighbours; it returns a beat later. Closer to a switch than a dissolve — restrained, mechanical, and the cheapest of the set, since it is one class per crossing.
Dwell
Speed is ignored; only stillness opens the field. Hold the pointer and the radius grows and deepens, keep moving and nothing happens. It asks for the same thing the copy does — attention held long enough to count. Rest the cursor in the middle for a second.
Tide
No pointer needed: a soft band crosses the field on a diagonal, so the dissolve is visible on a phone and on first glance, before anyone thinks to move a cursor. Slow and shallow on purpose — it should register as breathing, not as a loading state. The pointer still deepens whatever it passes over, and the loop pauses whenever the field is off screen.
Scatter
Dots under the pointer are thrown off their cell — half along their own fixed direction, half straight away from the cursor — then drift home on a slow release. Fast out, slow back, so the grid breaks up and reassembles: disruption rather than erasure.
Live page dots, third size
The homepage field exactly as it ships — proximity scale, same radius rule — but the whole grid at a third of its size. Small enough to sit beside the numeral as a mark rather than a chart. The radius is a fraction of the field's width, so the reach shrinks with it.