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May 6, 2012

8-bit Color Cycling in HTML 5

Posted: July 6, 2011 (on Rhizome Recommends)

Color cycling was a technique used in the older generation consoles of Gameboy colors and Nintendo 64’s in order to make certain artifacts or elements in the game look animated. It is a technique wherein a palette of colors is chosen to fill in an image on the screen, and in order to make that image look animated the artist simply shifts the colors along the image in a logical pattern. An analogy that the artist used was that of marquee lights - they look as if the lights are chasing each other across the sign when in fact they are simply turning on and off in a sequence.

Ferrari took this rendering technique that has been around for quite some time now, and integrated it into HTML 5, the latest web development platform. It is an example of a combination of past and present multimedia conventions that resulted in a new and improved interpretation of what people are used to seeing. The end result of Ferrari’s work was more than just the fire and water elemental artifacts that this technique was used for in the past. It is a creation of full environmental scenes that show such a sharp improvement from what this technology was used for in the past.

To appreciate his work more, all his current Color Cycling works are found in the link below. If one were to click on the “Show Options” tab on the top right of the image, there are controls that actually control how fast or slow the cycling happens, as well as shows which pixels are actually cycling throughout the image.

LINK: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=0

Sources:

http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5

http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Q_A_with_Mark_J_Ferrari

1:19am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpO-avKzRcF3

(Notes: 7)