Cheelee

In late 2022 Cheelee was a pre-launch startup: a short-video app that pays its users in tokens for watching, with pre-registration open on Google Play. Its first website had to explain an unfamiliar model to people who had never heard of it and walk them to the presale.

I was the only front-end developer on the site and spent six months on it, working directly with the designer. No React and no animation libraries: plain HTML, Sass and JavaScript.

The page had a lot to explain: a five-step reward scheme (free NFT glasses on sign-up, boxes with LEE tokens in the feed, glasses you upgrade to earn more), two-token economics and the presale. The design told it through saturated colour, custom illustrations, animated transitions and interactive sections, and I wrote every animation by hand. Few marketing sites moved like that at the time, and without a library each transition had to be timed and tuned manually.

The whole thing is responsive, from a wide desktop layout down to a phone, where the app itself lives.

Cheelee has since grown into an international platform: the company reports more than 18 million installs and over $11 million paid out to users.

For me it was the project where front-end work really clicked: layout, motion, and making a complex page hold together at every screen size.