The 128kb Challenge
This creative coding course is designed for students of all skill levels. The focus here is on learning creativity within narrowly defined boundaries. Your task will be to conceive and realize a series of visuals that are subject to strict technical constraints.
Learning Objectives
- Understanding the conceptual strenghts of design within boundaries
- Training creativity within boundaries
- Understanding the advantages of minimal digital artifacts
- Learning the basics in Creative Coding
Formal Parameters
Well, first of all you need to know the formal parameters, so there are a few rules you have to follow to get your work accepted.
| file format | .gif |
| size | 128*128px |
| duration | max. 128 frames |
| filesize | max. 128kb |
| color | max. 128 |
| Tools | Processing, p5.js |
Curation
We really appriciate every single upload, it’s great that took the time to create something for this platform! But we also try to keep the conceptual quality of the works on this platform as high as possible and that’s why unfortunately we can’t accept and upload all works that people submit.
Technical weaknesses and strenghts
In the past we have received many works that were interesting from a solely technical perspecitve but lacked an original idea and/or an interesting thought. Also the technical quality beyond surpassing the rrequirements is very important. Some submissions were also quite weak from a technical perspective: Some gifs could have been looped perfectly (so that you do not see a beginning and an end), but instead have hard cuts.
Visual weaknesses and strenghts
- Some gifs are just visual noise an generative complexity.
- Other submissions were just downscaled versions of existing works that were actually to complex for the small format.
Conceptual weaknesses and strenghts
We really celebrate work that takes the limitations of the medium into account, that try to express something.
Final Project Deliveries
- Create a series of gif-animations
- Create a series of 3-5 gif animations, respecting the technical requirements
- Make sure the series expresses something. Generative chaos is not welcome. Think of your visual like an illustration for an online newspaper, like The New York Times
- Test your series in an enviroment with mockups
- Design a poster that explains the code of one of your creations
- You can use all kinds of media for that
- use photography, charts, text, illustration
- Highlight a specific aspect or display the whole system
Schedule ⏱️
| Session | Contents | Homework |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||
| 6 | ||
| 7 | ||
| 8 | Final Presentations |
Gif Editing Tools
The Website
Prompts
This is a collection of design prompts that can be used for inspiration.
- Create a series of illustrations for Greek Myths
- Illustrate the subject “Virus”
- Illustrate the subject “New York”
- Create a gif that contains a secret code
- Create a gif that contains a poem
- Create A game
- Create a 3D-world
- Illustrate “Climate”
- Create a fake Datavisualization
- Illustrate “Crypto”
- Create a selfie animation
- Illustrate “The Internet”
- Illustrate “Networks”
- Explore the possibilities of Typography within the 18kb challenge
- Create a set of illustrations depicting everyday obejcts
- Illustrate “Interaction”
- Create a digital, animated flyer for an fictional institution
- Illustrate “Climate”
- ….