Perpetual Palette Swap

In old school video games, changing the colors - a palette swap - was a memory-conserving way to invent new game characters from old ones. Mario became Luigi, Ryu became Ken, and Inky became Pinky (and Blinky and Clyde...and Sue).

These animations of Super Mario randomly swap color palettes every second. With 16,777,216 different colors, used in groups of 4, there are 79,228,162,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. Even watching 6 Super Marios at a time, it would take 4,187,180,920,000,000,000,000 years to see all possible palettes.

Exhibited in: Columbia College Chicago's Art of Play 4 art show, 2011.

Skills Utilized: Flash, Actionscript, Illustrator, Photoshop, Audacity

View this animated artwork

View more Web Animation: