Palette Cycling
An animation trick that shifts colors through a limited palette instead of redrawing pixels. Popularized by Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and later by Lucasfilm Games artist Mark Ferrari, it made pixel-art water, fire and skies shimmer.
Spot it
- 01Rippling color bands
- 02Pixel-art water shimmer
- 03Static shapes, moving color
Why it happens
Pixels reference palette entries rather than fixed colors, so rotating the color values in the palette changes many pixels at once with almost no processing.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image-to-video prompt“Animate this image as pixel-art palette cycling: the picture stays perfectly still while color bands flow in endless seamless loops, with water shimmering, clouds drifting, fire flickering and sky gradients rotating through a limited 256-color palette. No camera movement, blocky pixels, a six-second looping cycle. Keep the original subject and composition.”
Open PixioUpload a still and pick a video model.