The present disclosure provides systems and methods for implementations of motion paths via pure CSS3 and HTML5, working in all major browsers and requiring no JavaScript. For each motion path degree of freedom (e.g., x translation), the system may insert an additional element into the document object model (DOM) to host its animation. In some implementations, the system may apply an optimization process to fit CSS3 keyframes rules that approximate the ideal motion path trajectory to a predetermined tolerance while minimizing the storage footprint. In addition to supporting CSS3 motion paths, this authoring model retains the ability to supply arbitrary standard CSS3 animations to transform channels, which allows users to, e.g., animate the scale and rotation of an element independent of its progress along a motion path.