#javascript text animation

[divinector]

Text Effect using typed js

[codingflicks]

Animated Typewriter Text

[jcmarchi]

The Law of Diminishing Returns

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-law-of-diminishing-returns/

The Law of Diminishing Returns

Some animation can make things feel natural. Too many animations becomes distracting.

Some line spacing can help legibility. Too much hurts it.

Some alt text is contextual. Too much alt text is noise.

Some padding feels comfy. Too much padding feels exposed.

Some specificity is manageable. Too much specificity is untenable.

Some technical debt is healthy. Too much of it becomes a burden.

Some corner rounding is classy. Too much is just a circle.

Some breakpoints are fluid. Too many of them becomes adaptive.

Some margin adds breathing room. Too much margin collapses things.

Some images add context. Too many images takes a long time to download (and impacts the environment).

Some JavaScript enhances interactions. Too much becomes a bottleneck.

A font pairing creates a typographic system. Too many pairings creates a visual distraction.

Some utility classes come in handy. Too many eliminates a separation of concerns.

Some data helps make decisions. Too much data kills the vibe.

Some AI can help write the boring parts of code. Too much puts downward pressure on code quality.

Some SEO improves search ranking. Too much mutes the human voice.

Some testing provides good coverage. Too much testing requires its own maintenance.

A few colors establish a visual hierarchy. Too many establish a cognitive dissonance.

Some planning helps productivity. Too much planning creates delays.

Striking the right balance can be tough. We don’t want cool mama bear’s porridge or hot papa’s bear porridge, but something right in the middle, like baby bear’s porridge.

[codenewbies]

Typing Text Effect

[ireadyabooks]

Float Vol. 1: Read an Excerpt

Dive into summer fun in this graphic novel romance from Webtoon. It's perfect for fans of True Beauty and Pumpkinheads!

Amidst the chaos of her parents’ bitter divorce, Alaskan teenager Waverly Lyons trades in her textbooks and parka for a summer of suntans and short-shorts with her aunt in Florida. A fish out of water even back in the snow, Waverly is determined to be everything she isn’t back home: cool, fun, dare she even say part of a group? There’s just one problem. She doesn’t know how to swim.

Enter Blake -- the super-tan, super-hot, super-arrogant boy next door who seems to hate her guts. When he discovers her secret, Waverly is positive that her perfect summer is perfectly over. But then Blake does the unthinkable. He offers to teach her.

This slice-of-life YA romance is illustrated in an anime-inspired style that readers will love. What are you waiting for? Dive in!

READ AN EXCERPT

Float Vol. 1 Excerpt by I Read YA on Scribd

(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "https://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

GET YOUR COPY

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Bookshop.org

[otherkinnews]

Mississippi and Oklahoma propose laws against students who identify as nonhuman animals

This article was originally written by Orion Scribner @frameacloud on January 18, 2025 on the Otherkin News blog on DreamWidth: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/95979.html

For the third year running, Republicans in the US have once again continued to write "anti-furry bills." On January 17, Republicans introduced Mississippi House Bill 1060 (MS HB 1060), which you can see for yourself on the state government's site, though you may need to enable Javascript if your web browser doesn't display it properly: https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2025/pdf/history/HB/HB1060.xml Currently, this is the bill's official description, as written by its sponsors:

"Gender dysphoria; require school personnel to notify parents of student who request to be referred to as different gender or nonhuman."

Emphasis added. Furthermore, the sponsors wrote it with this summary:

"An Act To Require School Administrators, Teachers, Counselors Or Other Personnel Of The School To Provide Written Notification To The Parent Or Legal Guardian Of Any Student Identifying At School As A Gender Or Pronoun That Does Not Align With The Child's Sex On Their Birth Certificate, Sex Assigned At Birth Or Using Sex-segregated School Programs And Activities Or School Facilities That Do Not Align With The Child's Sex Assignment At Birth, Within Three Days Of Becoming Aware Of Such Conduct Or Request By The Affected Student; To Provide That No School Personnel Shall Be Disciplined Or Suffer Any Unlawful Reprisal For Refusing To Acknowledge A Student By A Preferred Gender, Pronoun Or Animal Species That Is Inconsistent With The Child's Sex Assignment At Birth; To Prescribe The Legislative Intent; And For Related Purposes."

Emphasis added. Despite what the description and summary says, the bill text itself doesn't mention either of the topics that I emphasized here. This leaves it an ordinary example of legislature proposed to discriminate against transgender students in public schools. This is a common pattern in anti-furry bills, where an early version of the bill mentions students who identify as nonhuman animal species, to try to attract attention, and then the sponsors delete that part later so that the bill can focus on their real intentions against transgender students. Republicans mean for the temporary inclusion of that topic to satirize transgender students and make a comparison that they see as absurd. It's a reference to an urban legend that Republicans circulate, where supposedly schools that let transgender students use the restrooms they want are also providing litter boxes in classrooms for students who are furries. That urban legend has been debunked by the fact-checking sites Snopes and Reuters.

The bill was sponsored by these eleven Republican Representatives: Charles Blackwell, William Arnold, Randy Boyd, Larry Byrd, Carolyn Crawford, Jim Estrada, Greg Haney, Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, Donnie Scoggin, Joseph Tubb, and Beth Waldo. These are some of the same authors as a similar anti-furry bill from last year, Mississippi House Bill 176, which was also written by the same Blackwell, Arnold, Boyd, Byrd, and Scoggin, plus Dan Eubanks and Jimmy Fondren.

[Edited to add] Another new one is Oklahoma House Bill 1327, by sole sponsor Justin Humphrey. This is basically the same as his bill from last year, Oklahoma House Bill 3084, still proposing that students who identify as animals should get picked up from school by animal control. He specializes in introducing bills that sound bizarre to attract attention, and later he cleans them up so they'll pass into law. He prefiled it on December 30th so that it will be introduced on February 3.

Anti-furry bills similar to this one began in 2023 with North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, and a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. 2024 had Oklahoma House Bill 3084, Mississippi House Bill 176, and Missouri House Bill 2678. No anti-furry bills have yet passed into law as such. Fellow volunteers and I have been reporting on these in the Otherkin News blog all along, which you can read in the tag for that purpose. Don't like this bill? If you're a US citizen, voting is only one of your powers to shape the laws that you live under. In the recording of my polycule's panel about anti-furry bills, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary citizens can do. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Writer tip: Repeating a character trait doesn't make it true.

"he/she/they were clever." said ad nauseum doesn't make it true. Prove it in the text, demonstrate it.

I mean you could tell me. And you could show me the university certificate, but it doesn't make it true and I won't believe you.

s/He was an inventor. Fine. He was an inventor, then demonstrate it in the text. Are they a one-trick pony and can't apply it after you introduce it? Then I think he stole the invention. He doesn't know how it works, can't demonstrate it being useful in other applications, can't figure out how to invent anything on the spot, has no mind of being an engineer. I don't believe you. Give me the mindset of the person.

The person was intelligent... again, demonstrate this is true in the text by them using words in context that makes them sound emotionally and intellectually intelligent. I'd be much more impressed if they were explaining fancy mathematical theory to a three year old using three-year old language than I would be them using long multi-syllabic words at random. That takes extra intelligence, to me. Fermat's Theorem AND be sensitive enough to get a Three year old's attention, hold it, and get the kid to understand. That's like intelligence on steroids.

It's not show or tell in this case, it's *actually put it into the text* instead of slamming me with the character trait over and over.

If I went around telling everyone every ten seconds I was smart, and I was clever, would you believe me? If I said I got into Yale, maybe you would wince and ask something like, Iunno, were you a nepo?

But if I told you I watched an episode of MacGyver and then broke apart a mechanical pencil for the spring and used some sticky tack to fix a screen door. That would lead some credence to how I was smart.

(BTW, he wasn't fixing a screen door in the episode).

If I told you I used dental floss to make a locking door open from the other side, you might believe me (It was a lunchroom push door. I'd gone to the dentist the previous day and had it in my pocket. I got sick of getting up for the door, so rigged it.)

BTW, this isn't a copy-paste moment, but to think up your own creative solutions to problems and try to borrow the mindset of everything can be fixed with duct tape, for example.

In another words, the more I demonstrate the logic, the mindset, then you'll start to believe me.

This person was creative. Still doesn't make it true. This person did avante garde paintings challenging colonialism and a dying planet using mixed mediums and trash, might tip those scales.

Frankly, I don't care if you tell me, or if you show me, just demonstrate it on the page it's true instead of repeating it over and over at me.

Go MacGyver with your engineer. Know your art movements for your artist. Know your pirouettes for your ballerinas. Pick up at least a fraction of the mindsets, so when Iunno, a computer engineer looks at someone saying the UX person told them that the program functions, but it doesn't actually work, it makes sense. (I saw a Japanese drama do this brilliantly, BTW, and I was delighted. On the flip side, I've seen people try to pass HTML and Javascript as "programming" especially badly formatted Javascript. I'm looking at you Square Space. WTF was with that badly formatted Javascript and calling that "programming". I may lack game, but seriously, that's not a good advertisement. Look, our program spits out terrible javascript and we don't know what programming and scripting is...) This is why the best writers are nerds. Wok Hei for your Chinese chef. I spent 3 hours looking up old waterwheels to get the engineering.

Again, don't use AI to get there, do the work and find an edge to play with. A gap. Because AI can't find gaps. A lot of professions have mindsets or varying mindsets. And if you capture that, you'll get ahead. Did I watch Cells at Work because doctors highly recommended the anime, yes I did. But I also picked up how doctors think.

BTW, dropping into process story structure for a little bit to demonstrate the impact or the brilliance of a chef, a painter, an engineer, etc usually tips people over the edge. It doesn't have to consume that long in the book either.

[mickmeasley]

Homestar Runner just released a toon to commemorate its 25th anniversary of existing as a website.

Let that sink in.

25 years.

Its especially crazy when you realize just how few websites from that era made it out of the 2000s, let alone 2010s, and how much any new website struggles to stay alive today.

As for the cartoon itself, while Homestar Runner really isn't that funny to me anymore, and this cartoon wasn't an exception, watching this gave me a very odd, eerie, hard to articulate feeling.

so let me try to articulate,

i was 13 when i first watched Homestarrunner, and by that time the site was already 16 years old, already a barely relevant, barely alive relic of a bygone era of internet culture that I wasn't even around to see. Not that it mattered to me, as an autistic teenager whos interests were already frequently and completely out of touch with what was relevant to anyone my age. i watched pretty much every toon they ever made, every last sbemail.

I even remember my doomed attempt to make my own Homestar Runner style series, with a pirated copy of flash, crude html skills, and a dream, wondering why I was the only one to pick up the slack on this utterly unique sub-medium of animation.

I'm 21 now, and Homestar Runner now doesn't even just feel old, it feels like something from an entirely different reality, as if my memories of it are totally fake and if I actually look back I'll find out that there was never such a thing as Homestar Runner.

Its probably responsible for influencing much of the shape of internet culture and indie animation, but I can only say "probably". Nothing really links back to it in any tangible sense, you can't trace a lineage of inspiration of any current webseries back to it, and a big part of that is probably due to its format. It primarily existed on its own dedicated website, instead of youtube, or newgrounds, or any pre-youtube video site like gametrailers or screwattack. and on top of that, its production value was more polished than any other flash animation or webseries of its time, and yet its scope and approach to the design of its characters and "world" was ruthlessly efficient and minimalistic.

Where a lot of indie projects aim for big concepts and big style, trying to ape TV animation/anime, Homestar Runner aimed to be very small and quick, with characters somehow less animated than the average stick figure and sharing more of its comedic/narrative DNA with the average weekly comic strip than what most indie animation was trying to be (when it wasn't doing swearing mario parodies). It was a universe barely bigger than your average Garry's Mod TTT map, only as rich and expansive as its most one-off joke. That extreme approach to being the minimum viable product with an above-average quality and consistency gave it a significant edge over most online animation of the time, allowing an (almost) weekly format for its most defining period of relevance.

And all of that is not even getting into how it made the most of being a flash web application with its interactivity. Every single menu on the site, even the plain text buttons under the main window, was a flash element. Every single page jam-packed with interactive animation with a unique skeumorphic approach to menus that puts even the most kitschy, lively DVD menu to shame, and to this day is a breath of fresh air from overly rounded-off and soullessly minimalistic web design of today. And if you clicked on the right nooks, crannies, and lines of text strong bad somehow typed out with his begloved hands, you got a pop-up easter egg or even a little extra bit of cartoon to reward you.

Somehow, none of its approaches to format, or interactivity, or web design ever caught on. It was undeniably a product of its time, of course, the idea of entirely flash websites were an extremely awkward peach-fuzz era between web 1.0 and the integration of javascript and dynamic web elements, but theres a strange, dare I say liminal charm to that. And I can't really humor the idea that its ever going to come back.

Sure, we have the rise of "Old Internet Aesthetics", with people making plain html websites with neocities to try and stroke some hauntological intrigue boner and wax wistful about the lost, wild west era of the internet buried by time, but it remains to be seen whether or not thats ever going to manage to become more than a neat little novelty art project that people eventually abandon because it's so outmoded in its ability to generate clout/dopamine by the digital megacities of Xitter and uhh.. Instagram i guess? And of course, the era of flash websites is hardly as resolute an aesthetic as the web 1.0 html site, so its been completely passed over and will likely see its day in the sun, and neither will the pioneering format of homestar runner unless the entire structure of internet culture bends over backwards.

Its the first and last of its kind, a format never tried before or since, a successful and wildly ahead-of-its-time but nonetheless shelved experiment forever gathering dust, like the laserdisc, or one of those strangely designed pre-apple cellphones, a window into what the internet was, and could have been before the iphone came along and derailed everything.

Its an eerie, abstract kind of feeling.

[izicodes]

My 2023 Projects

Wednesday 3rd January 2024

I thought it would be cool to share some of the projects I made last year that I liked and enjoyed working on! Most of them were small projects, some were projects I built straight after I learnt a new concept and a few are discontinued (I won't finish them anytime soon)!

I really hope, which I know I will because it's natural for me at this point, to make lots of more cool projects! This year, I want to make more with other people! Coding alone is cool and all but with other people I get more inspired!

Lastly = always remember to build projects that you're interested in. Projects you will have fun working on for a while. Every single one of these projects I've made, I was interested in somehow. And I had fun!!

Anyhoo, check out the projects below~! 🙋🏾‍♀️😊🖤

TumblrTextTint

Basically a formatter for Tumblr posts by adding custom colours to your text! Even learnt how to make FireFox extensions so I could add it as an extension to my browser - link 1, link 2

Web Odyssey

I looked at old Windows GUI on Pinterest one day and decided to recreate the GUI with HTML, CSS and JavaScript! - link 1, link 2

Cat Fact Generator

For one of the projects I did for the #3Days1Project challenge, I created a cute cat generator. Learnt how to work with APIs and a CSS library (Pattern.css) - link 1, link 2

Studyblr Valentines Gift 2023

It was valentine season in the Studyblr community and I participated! I made a poem webpage for a studyblr who was learning Russian! (I don't know anything in Russian but for a couple of weeks I learnt some of the poems!) - link 1, link 2

Saint Jerome Tribute Page

I made a page for my favourite patron saint, Saint Jerome, for his feast day (Sept 30)! I haven't had time to complete it fully and there's no live page for it but I did make posts about it! - link 1

Trigun Quote Generator

Just finished the Trigun anime series at the time so I decided to make a project for it for the #3Days1Project challenge! The anime is so good, it is my 2nd favourite (JOJO comes 1st place) - link 1, link 2

Froggie To-Do

Just came from learning the absolute BASICS of React.js, so I wanted to test my skills so far so I made this project! Shared it on my blog and some people started using it for studying (which made me so happy!) and it became a mini open-source project because random people started adding mini features to the app! Very special project for me! - link 1, link 2, link 3

[yuraslefttoe]

How do you make the shaky text effects in your songs? They look so dynamic and I'd love to steal your skills lmao.

after affects position animator -> wiggly selector -> type wiggle(25, 2); or something like that in the javascript box

[misfitprose]

Annoying, but useful.

Ugh, I did not miss that sound!!

God, before the Internet, I would just listen to lousy radio stations where I couldn't block the songs I didn't like, or I would watch TV. I remember we were the last people in the neighborhood to even GET a computer, and we had to share it, so I didn't get to spend as much time exploring the Internet as I would have liked. We also used to get 30 free hours a month because we couldn't afford to pay for AOL at first. I did all the things you'd expect: I had a Geocities page, a LiveJournal, I tried a bunch of celebrity goofy voices to say, "You've got Mail!" It was fun, because none of us knew what we were doing. I used to listen to something called LAUNCHcast, which was one of the first streaming radio services where you could rank songs. I spent literal HOURS doing that! Then Yahoo! bought it, and it wasn't so great, but I still used it. When YouTube first started, it was for people to post their OWN content. It wasn't until people started posting bootlegs and things that hadn't been seen in years that I stumbled upon it. Remember javascript applets? I think everyone's first web page had crawling rainbow text and embedded MIDI files. I was heavily into blinkies for a while - those little animated bumper sticker things?

I sometimes miss those days, too...but I don't miss the dialup sound!!

[divinector]

Typing Text Animation HTML CSS & Vanilla JavaScript

[codingflicks]

Typewriter Animated Text

[gordonramsei]

⟢ ∘ ｡ DELICATE + DREAMER ⦂ SEPTEMBER 2023 , THEME & PAGE .

delicate + delicate dreamer is a theme and page combo designed to be used together for either a single muse page , a main , or anything else that speaks to u ! both the theme and the page are available to the coding and theme tier as a special treat for my supporters this month . alternatively , u can purchase each code by itself or as a pack on payhip . enjoy the codes !

please give this post a reblog & a like & take care of urself ! keep hydrated & pet a cute animal today !

∘ ｡⟣ specs for delicate :

single  ,  large  sidebar  image  .

(  optional  )  sidebar accent images that scale up on hover  .

(  optional  )  hover - able title  or stagnant title .

(  optional  )  toggle the visibility of the title for a more minimalistic look .

offers accessible font  sizing  option .

offers  390px  post  sizing  .

animated pinned post marquee .

one  editable  link  for  u  to  use  for  whatever  .

6  editable  links  in  the  nav  tab  .

subtle  fade  in  tab  animation  .

ooc info box + description in the nav tab .

complete  list  of  credits  and  inspirations  are  detailed  in  the  code  .

∘ ｡⟣ specs for delicate dreamer :

100% javascript free page !

animated marquee title .

a bio / stats page .

favorites page w/ spotify playlist and outfit inspo images .

an aesthetic page with 9 boxes that display text upon hover .

live previews : delicate , delicate dreamer .

payhip purchase links : delicate ( theme only ) , delicate dreamer ( page only ) , delicate dreamer pack ( theme + page )

become a patreon to get access to these codes and many others by clicking the source link !

[zpuaacapstone]

Update #3 (Part 1)

This'll be progress for the past week, since I went over Update #2 close to the 18th. I'm technically finished with the necessary elements to my Game Design Document. Any changes to it will be a result of edits. I've finished reading Jenny Harder's Creative Character Design for Games and Animation, which has helped greatly with the overall character design process and what I should be looking for when sketching.

Overall, since technically I'm the client and the briefing & character description is done, I'll do a style guide, the iterative sketching phase, the lineart + flat color and expressions, the color iterations, and the final render.

For the game section, the "sandbox" in RPG Maker MZ, where I've been inputting plugins to see what works and what didn't, has also been finished. These are the plugins I'll be including, as follows:

To summarize, the features are:

A title screen made of custom graphics.

A parallax mapping plugin.

"Gab windows" that are message windows where the player can move as they appear.

Sound effects for dialogue text (like in Undertale).

A plugin that allows for character bust images in dialogue.

Smoother game camera.

Weather effects.

A custom menu system excluding the program's default "Status" and "Equipment" features.

"Skills" assigned for each playable character on the map, to be coded with my common events.

A "Proximity Compass" that serves as a major navigational feature in the game.

I'll have to rethink some mechanics, but at least I have a slightly better grasp at how Javascript works.

Writing the narrative script has also begun, with the introductory cutscene as well as some character establishment having been typed out. It's currently on Google Docs, and I usually have a more screenwriting-related format since I took a course on screenwriting years ago.

Perhaps I'll put in edits while putting this dialogue into the game engine, and try to make it seem less stilted and full of information dumps. Some hurdles is that now that I have a better grasp at how long each task will be, I'll have to edit my Workback Plan accordingly. It's less than a week left of February, and I want to have at least 95% of what I wanted finished before March to be done, which is made harder by delays. At least by now, the pre-production is ending and the production phase has begun.

[andymakesgames]

Andy's 2024 Year in Review

I tend to work on a lot of small projects with a smattering of larger ones mixed in. Often I end the year thinking I didn't do all that much, but then I start going through my posts and realize that I did more than I thought! Hard to believe that stuff I did last January was this year!

I've fallen out of the habit of doing these year-in-review posts, which is a shame, but I'm turning that around right now! Here's a quick look at all the things I made last year.

EMMA

Probably the biggest thing for me is another successful year of the coop I'm a part of, EMMA Technology Cooperative. After a somewhat tough 2023, we bounced back this year. Seeing us survive a lean time and watching the coffers refill in the past year really drove home the value of organizing around cooperation as opposed to infinite growth. And if you're reading this and in need of a creative technologist, please drop us a line!

Taper - January

A the start of this year I was on the editorial board of Taper, online literary journal for computational poetry. I only assisted with one issue (which I also contributed to!) but it was a very new experience for me and I'm happy I could be a part of it!

A few years ago I kind of stumbled into the occasional piece of digital poetry without ever realizing. I was doing a literal poetry reading when I realized that I write poems from time to time. It's very fun that my practice occasionally pulls me in unexpected directions.

MAGFest - January

Every year, we bring all of the games in the Arcade Commons collection to the Music and Games Festival just outside of Washington DC. It is our biggest show of the year by a mile and I love it every time. There is a DIY spirit to MAGFest that really sets it apart from any other con I've been to. We're well underway for 2025 as I write this. As I frequently do, I emceed a bunch of our tournaments.

The Algorithm - February

What a fun project this was! Alia ElKattan and Lujain Ibrahim contacted me about their Mozilla Foundation-funded project to explain how algorithmic feeds work. I created modular P5JS animations to serve as the "content" for their app.

They found me via the P5 tweetcarts I had been posting during the pandemic. I got to explore some of those same ideas without the super tight character restrictions.

Check it out here.

EMMA Skillshare - March

I did a small workshop on getting PICO-8 to communicate with Javascript. This was the basis for my project Pico Pond which I wrote about on the EMMA Blog.

This skillshare took those ideas and presented them in a livestream, which you can watch here.

Our Generation - May

I was contacted by Nick Montfort to submit a piece of computer generated poetry for a small-run book called Our Generation: Programs + Computer-Generated Texts. I channeled my inner Jenny Holzer for this and really enjoyed it. The full src appears at the top of the page and it was interesting to factor that in to make sure the output exactly filled the page. I keep thinking it would be fun to do a series using this size restriction but I haven't done it yet.

You can see my full page here.

Tastebud Tapdancer - May

You've been swallowed by a giant serpent but you're trying to make the best of it.

A little video game with a source code of just 500 characters! Made for TweetTweetJam 9 You can play it here.

The Indomitable Rocket Dog - June

Around this point in the year is where I started working on my current project, The Indomitable Rocket Dog. I'm enjoying this game so much. I haven't made a real twitchy arcade game since PARTICLE MACE, which just celebrated its 10th birthday. It is still very early but I feel really good about this one!

After MAGFest 2024 I was percolating on physics-y arcade games mostly because I am so deeply in love with Hoverburger by Nick Santaniello. Before I knew it my love of N++ was mixed in there as well.

I'm writing all of my own physics in C++ because I had a vague sense of how I want it to feel and it's a hobby project so I can do what I want.

I've been documenting my development on it in a mastodon thread.

Isabelle Poppy And Bling - August

OK, this one isn't new at all! This is a flash game I made in 2009 for musician Justin Braun. But this year I got it playable on the web again!

Like so many game developers my age, I got my start with Macromedia Flash. This game felt like the culmination of my style at the time, which was heavily influenced by Animutation. I was starting to be more deliberate with my collage style as opposed to aiming for totally random elements. I think I got paid $600 for it, which felt huge at the time.

1K Pac-Man - September

Another size coded game. This time it's as faithful a recreation of Pac-Man as I could muster in 1024 bytes of source code. All of the ghost logic is accurate to the original!

You can play it here. I'm very pleased with the mouth animation.

I made it for PICK-1K Jam 2024. I do wish I had read the page a little more carefully though. The jam required compressed source to be 1024 bytes and I did raw source. The game is only 723 compressed bytes so I had a lot of room to expand, but by the time I realized that I had painstakingly trimmed and optimized my code and I couldn't imagine untangling it. Oops.

Cloud Gobblers - November

Arcade Commons received a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to create an arcade machine showing a collection of games that incorporate weather data into the gameplay. EMMA was commissioned to make one of the games. Cloud Gobblers is a snake-style game where the playfield is a video satellite field of global cloud coverage over a period of 48 hours.

This was the first time all of the members of EMMA worked together on one project!

Three Tapestries - October

I didn't make many pen plotter drawings this year, but I really liked this one. You can see the full thing here.

It's currently still available in my shop! Until somebody buys it it will be hanging on the wall in my office.

Lever Up Jam - December

Back in 2021, I worked with Matt Lepage on an alt-control game jam called Jam Jam Revolution. We prepped a parts list so all participants could build the same controller and make games for it. This year we decided to dust off that idea with the Lever Up Jam. This time there will be a full-sized cabinet at MAGFest that the games can be played on!

My favorite TweetCarts / Postcarts This Year

I no longer use Twitter, but I have been making the occasional tweetcart (a PICO-8 sketch with source code 280 bytes or less) and posting them on tumblr and mastodon. But there was an exciting development towards the end of the year! Lexaloffle, the creator of Pico-8 created a section on the BBS for 300 char or less "Postcarts", so we now have a centralized home for these little byte-sized demos.

Here are three of my favorite postcarts that I made this year:

Spinning Cube v3 - April

p=pset::_::cls()for i=0,99do u=0s=i/4+t()/5x=64+sin(s)*39a=64+sin(s+.25)*39y=39+cos(s)*9b=39+cos(s+.25)*9line(x,y,a,b,6)for k=0,99do if x>a and i<4and k<50then line(x,y+k,a,b+k,k>48and 7or 9+i)p(x,y+k,7)p(a,b+k)end v=pget(i,k)u+=v if(v>6)break if(u>0)p(i,k,8)end end flip()goto _

Big year for making things spin. You can check out my tumblr post to see all my attempts at perfecting this spinning cube. The outlines were the real cherry on top for me.

Balatro Spinning Card - May

a=abs::_::cls()e=t()for r=0,46do for p=0,1,.025do j=sin(e)*20k=cos(e)*5f=1-p h=a(17-p*34)v=a(23-r)c=1+min(23-v,17-h)%5/3\1*6u=(r-1)/80z=a(p-.2)if(e%1<.5)c=a(r-5)<5and z<u+.03and(r==5or z>u)and 8or 8-sgn(h+v-9)/2 g=r+39pset((64+j)*p+(64-j)*f,(g+k)*p+(g-k)*f,c)end end flip()goto _

This was so hard to make! I can't believe I did it. I wrote a giant writeup breaking down the 279 byte source code on the EMMA blog.

Fuji - October

pal({7,12,140,13,129,1,5,8,8,14,142,143,7},1)r=rnd::_::x=r(128)y=r(128)c=9+y/26-2+r(1.5) if(y<((x+40)/6)^1.6and y<((178-x)/6)^1.6and y<79+r(2))c=2.5-sgn(y-45-sin(x/21)*r(4))*1.5+r(2.5-sgn(x-69-r(8)-y/3+25)*.7) pset(x,128-y,c)a=r(1)d=r(25)pset(28+sin(a)*d,30+cos(a)*d,9)goto _

I made this during some downtime on a vacation to Japan. I was hoping to see Fuji the next day and the clouds wound up being kind to us, giving an amazing view.

I almost never make representational art and I was really happy with how this turned out.

That's it! I hope you all have a great 2025!