Topic-wise, October is probably my favorite month. It’s the ultimate excuse to dive headfirst into the Spooktober spirit — no matter the context. I’m not sure how much of an artistic advancement I made this time, but I definitely had fun along the way.

This month also brought me two CodePen Picks (yay me!). As usual, everything was created with the assistance of AI — though this round, I leaned more into shape play and form exploration, where AI is, let’s be honest, still kind of useless (no offense, corporate overlords).

In a nutshell: I had fun, leaned into that spooky-cute aesthetic inspired by 60s–90s pop art, and sprinkled in a touch of early-2000s internet quirk. Because really, what’s Halloween without a little nostalgia and chaos?

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Week 1: 🕰️ Halloween Time (🌟 CodePen Pick 🌟)

The very first challenge of the month revolved around time. The prompt was simple enough — make something with a time element. Basically, anything from a working clock to a ⏰ emoji would fit the brief.

For my take, I decided to recreate the classic Kit-Cat clock. It’s adorable in a retro way but also gives off that uncanny, cursed-object energy — the kind of thing you’d expect to blink at you in a Conjuring movie. Think Annabelle, but make it ticking and cute.

And luckily, this little creepy-cute creation earned me my first CodePen Pick of the month.

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Week 2: 👹 Halloween Masks

Next up — the Halloween Mask Challenge. Because honestly, what’s spooky season without a little dress-up chaos?

Once again, a pretty broad prompt: make something that involves a mask. So, following the logic of the first challenge — I made… a mask. Only this one came with a creative tax from the fever dream known as KDH (K-Pop Demon Hunters) — meaning it spiraled into a wild mash-up of cute, cursed, and vaguely anime-adjacent energy.

At first, I planned on creating a Kitsune mask, inspired by the Japanese fox spirit from Yokai folklore. Thematically spooky, but not in the cheap jump-scare way. Then, as usual, the process rebelled. Somewhere between sketch and code, my elegant fox turned into a tiger-ish, bear-dog-raccoon hybrid.

So, I rolled with it. Thus was born my derpy raccoon dog — equal parts folklore and fever dream.

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Week 3: 👻 Halloween Tricks

Week 3 called for some front-end tricks, and — with all fairness — I was running a little creatively dehydrated at this point. So I did what any sensible person would do: I rickrolled the internet.

But not just any rickroll — this one was randomly triggered by probability, because what’s scarier than uncertainty? Of course, it had to be dressed in my favorite dark blue-green palette, with a sprinkle of blending modes and soft animations.

The final vibe? Think “Tales from the Crypt” meets comfort horror VHS from your childhood — warm, fuzzy, fake-spooky. The kind of nostalgic aesthetic that’s so obviously cheesy it circles back to charming.

Basically, a cozy rickroll from a better time.

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Week 4: 🎃 Halloween Fun (🌟 CodePen Pick 🌟)

Last but not least — the final challenge. The brief? As vague as it gets: make something that’s Halloween fun.

Even though this Pen earned me my second CodePen Pick of the month (yay, I guess), I honestly feel it was a bit undeserved.

For this one, I wanted to pay tribute to perhaps my favorite movie of all time — Beetlejuice. The aesthetics, the mood, that strange philosophical coziness about death — it’s all wrapped in a warm blanket of spicy jokes and ridiculously good art direction.

So, I took the 3D book tutorial by Sébastien Castiel, swapped the cover for The Handbook for the Recently Deceased, and added some stylistic tweaks of my own. Simple enough, but a heartfelt nod to the web creators who still share their craft online — and a reminder of why I fell in love with web design in the first place.

Back when “AI” meant spending three hours on Stack Overflow.

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To Conclude

I truly enjoyed this month’s challenge — it felt like an escape route to a creative landscape, a way to disconnect from the current reality that honestly looks like a bad glitch in the matrix.

It’s always refreshing to create something for the sake of creation — to center your ideas without worrying about what should be done or what might be liked by someone else. In a sense, it’s a small act of rebellion — a search for your own voice, or just a pure exploration of aesthetics and code.

And yeah, not gonna lie — it’s a nice ego boost when something you make gets picked, especially during tougher times. Huge thanks again to Sébastien Castiel for the 3D book tutorial, and to CodePen for the Picks.