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Low-poly cicada

Built from Three.js primitives at runtime — there is no .glb, no loader and no asset request. The whole insect is a few hundred flat-shaded triangles, which is smaller shipped as code than it would be as a file. Wings pivot at the shoulder and feather through the stroke, so the beat reads as flight rather than as a windscreen wiper.

triangles — · — fps

drag to orbit · scroll to zoom

wingbeat 14 Hz flight path auto-orbit wireframe view

What is worth knowing

Real cicadas beat their wings at roughly 60–120 Hz. At that rate on a screen the wings vanish into a blur, so the default here is 14 Hz — slow enough to read as a wing, fast enough to read as flight. Push the slider up to see why nobody animates it accurately.
The wing pivots at the shoulder, not at its centre. Each wing sits in its own group positioned at the wing root; rotating that group is what makes the stroke look hinged.
Feathering is the detail that sells it. The wing twists on rotation.z a quarter-cycle out of phase with the up/down stroke, the way a real wing changes angle of attack as it reverses.
The body bobs at twice the wingbeat — one dip per power stroke — and the abdomen trails slightly behind the body.
Flat shading is the whole aesthetic. Every surface uses flatShading: true with low segment counts, so the facets are deliberate rather than a compromise.