CCC Nusan 2024
Pixelated bad dream
I'm using a "fantasy console" called TIC-80, which is open source and lets you make tiny retro games or animations using LUA
TIC-80 limits you to a resolution of 240x136 and only 16 colors palette, but there is a trick I use to change the palette before each scanline, so you can have a lot more colors on screen.
All my effects use some sort of remanence, that is not clearing the screen fully at the start of the frame, but keeping whatever is there, and only changing a few pixels per frame to a darker color, so things fade to black slowly. This lets me blend all my effects together while providing an interesting texture to everything.
I’m using a specific version of TIC-80 dedicated to live coding, where an FFT of the background sound is available, letting you make audio-reactives effects.
I made the final video in two steps, I first improvised several effects in TIC-80 that react on music and then I recorded them playing while putting some background music and live changing the sound’s volume to influence the level of the FFT and so the “intensity” of my effects, I made several recordings until I was satisfied with the result
TIC-80 website TIC-80 FFT version