Rebuilding an Awwwards-winning landing page from scratch teaches things a tutorial can't. Notes from cloning Zentry with React and GSAP.
Tutorials teach you APIs. Rebuilding a site that won Awwwards Site of the Day teaches you judgment — why this easing and not that one, why the animation starts at 85% viewport and not 100%, why the section pins for exactly two screen heights.
When I rebuilt Zentry's landing page, the hard part wasn't the code. It was noticing everything: the way videos crossfade behind a clip-path, the way text staggers in slightly after the layout settles, the way nothing ever moves for no reason.
Copy the decisions, not the pixels
The point of a clone isn't the finished artifact — it's the hundred small decisions you're forced to reverse-engineer. Each one is a lesson in taste from a team at the top of the field.
A useful discipline: don't open their source until your version works. The struggle is the curriculum; comparing afterwards is the exam.
Elsewhere on the site
The ideas here get used rather than just written about — the projects are where the animation and performance work lives, and client work covers the production systems. If you want something built, services explains how that works, or just get in touch.