riso-windowseat README

The project's README from github.com/sevenevesai/riso-windowseat. As one markdown file: README.md.

riso-windowseat

Procedural risograph films and prints, each a single index.html of Canvas 2D and Web Audio: no libraries, fonts, images or network calls. The repo began as the release of Window Seat. Making it, and the two shorts before it, produced a reusable kit of Claude Code skills, craft docs and a render harness. Roost, Held and Nonpareil were made with it next.

Window Seat, dawn from the viaduct

Films

All are 1080 × 1080, 30 fps. MP4s are on the v1.0 release. To watch the source instead, open any index.html in a browser and press play.

Film Length
Window Seat 78 s A night train journey through one window, scored for piano
Roost 70 s One take of a starling murmuration from sunset to roost, scored for strings
Held 70 s A kite that flies only while something holds its line, scored for found instruments
Nonpareil 70 s Paper marbling from the first drop to the one print it makes, scored for handpan
Lumen 28 s A seed that contains a sun; the first short, in call-and-response form
Emergence 28 s Lumen's sibling: how machines learned to listen, as nine worlds

Window Seat

A night train journey seen through one fixed window with a glass of water on the sill. Every pixel and every sound except the piano is procedural.

Time Passage
0–19 s Golden departure from a platform, fields, a red truss bridge, a conifer cutting, a tunnel
19–38 s A night city with a canal and a level crossing; another train overtakes, passengers in its windows
38–57 s Fireworks over a lake, sleeper hours with star trails, pre-dawn fog
57–78 s Dawn from a viaduct, rain streaming back along the glass, a lakeside halt under a rainbow

The score, "A Light Left in the Window", is an original piano piece in 6/8 whose phrasing follows the picture's timeline. The glass of water leans with every acceleration and is the last thing to settle.

Contact sheet of Window Seat's shots

Roost

A murmuration over a marsh in one fixed view. Each starling is a 2–3 px ink dot, so the flock is the halftone: where the sheet turns edge-on, the birds pile into dark printed ribbons. A falcon stoops through it and the flock pours into the reeds at nightfall. The string score is timed from the picture.

Held

A paper kite's line frays and parts at a hillside stake. Loose, it can only tumble; it falls across a harbour town, is snagged for a moment by a church weathervane, and over the water its line catches on a sloop's forestay, so the kite climbs again, held by the boat sailing into dusk. Its tail and loose line are simulated ropes. The score uses CC0 mbira, harp, glockenspiel, chimes, strings and flute, with every cue read from the picture's events.

Nonpareil

Paper marbling seen straight down into the bath. Drops of colour land on the beat and push each other outward; a rake and a fine comb drag them into the nonpareil pattern, and a flower is dropped and pulled into the middle. A sheet unrolls across the bath, is peeled back toward the lens like a turning page, and lands face up and mirrored beside the emptied tray. The marbling is closed-form geometry, so every frame is exact. The drops are the handpan's notes, over a slow cello and contrabass line.

How they're made

I directed each film; Claude Code (Anthropic's coding agent) wrote the code, using the skills, rules and docs in this repo. A work is designed in its FILM.md, its hardest frame is proved first, and then it is inspected as frame strips, 1:1 crops and loudness sheets rendered by tools/. Every frame is a pure function of time (seek(t)), so any moment can be inspected exactly and the MP4 cannot drop frames. Each FILM.md records the design decisions and measurements, and lists the film's remaining weaknesses.

Make your own

git clone https://github.com/sevenevesai/riso-windowseat
cd riso-windowseat/tools
npm install && npm run setup && npm test

Then open Claude Code in the repo root and ask, for example:

CLAUDE.md gives the session the contract and commands. The riso-film, riso-still and riso-score skills in .claude/skills/ carry the workflow and gates. Each skill's examples.md points to the routines in the shipped films that are worth reusing. A hook warns when an edit breaks determinism.

What's inside

Path Contents
films/ The six films, each with its FILM.md; Window Seat, Roost, Held and Nonpareil include sample credits and bank rebuild scripts
prints/workings/ A still print series and the print kit new works start from
docs/ The craft: brief, visual development, drawing, scene space, motion, sound, quality bar
studies/ Interactive A/B studies of each technique, and the sound kit
tools/ Scaffolding, verification, contact sheets, audio analysis and MP4 export (README)
.claude/ Skills, the ink-plate rule and the determinism hook

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The piano recordings embedded in Window Seat are Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm under CC BY 3.0; see AUDIO-SOURCES.md. The string recordings embedded in Roost are VSCO 2 Community Edition by Versilian Studios under CC0 1.0; see AUDIO-SOURCES.md. Held's instruments are from Versilian's VCSL and VSCO 2, also CC0 1.0; see AUDIO-SOURCES.md. Nonpareil's handpan is GAMEDRIX974's HandPan pack on Freesound and its cello and contrabass are from VSCO 2, all CC0 1.0; see AUDIO-SOURCES.md.

riso-windowseat (sevenevesai/riso-windowseat)

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297 ·GitHub
Riso-windowseat
What is this?Procedural risograph-style animated films, each a single self-contained HTML file of Canvas 2D and Web Audio, plus the Claude Code skills, craft docs and tools used to make them.
Are these videos I download, or do they run in a browser?Both: each film is one index.html you open in a browser and press play, and rendered MP4s — all 1080 × 1080 at 30 fps — are on the v1.0 release.
How do I make my own film with it?Open Claude Code in the repo root and just ask — e.g. 'Make a 40 second riso film of a lighthouse keeper's night.' The riso-film, riso-still and riso-score skills in .claude/skills/ carry the workflow and its quality gates.
Do I need Claude Code, or anything else, installed just to watch the films?No — a browser is enough. The files ship no libraries, fonts or images and make no network calls, so they even play offline; Claude Code is only needed to create new works with the kit.
Can I tweak a film's code without breaking it?Every frame is a pure function of time, so any moment stays exactly inspectable and the exported MP4 cannot drop frames — and a hook warns as soon as an edit breaks that determinism.
Which films are included?Six: Window Seat (78 s, a night train journey scored for piano), Roost (70 s, a starling murmuration), Held (70 s, a kite that flies only while something holds its line), Nonpareil (70 s, paper marbling), plus two 28-second shorts, Lumen and Emergence.
How do the films get the printed risograph look?The halftone is procedural: in Roost each starling is a 2–3 px ink dot, so the flock itself is the halftone, piling into dark printed ribbons where the sheet turns edge-on. Nonpareil's marbling is closed-form geometry, so every frame is exact.
Whose music and sounds are embedded?Sample libraries: Window Seat's piano is Salamander Grand Piano V3 (CC BY 3.0), while Roost, Held and Nonpareil draw on CC0 sets such as VSCO 2 CE, VCSL and a Freesound handpan pack — all credited in AUDIO-SOURCES.md.
How is a film's quality checked?Each work is designed in a FILM.md, its hardest frame is proved first, and tools/ renders frame strips, 1:1 crops, contact sheets, audio analysis and MP4 exports for inspection; every FILM.md also lists the film's remaining weaknesses.
What are similar projects?procedural-film, pdoom-video, awesome-opus5-5-videos, world-execute-me-dsh-pv, huashu-art-motion, PDoomVideo, genart-skill, motion-video-kit
Which topics is it in?procedural, web-audio, ai-art, 2d, motion-graphics, claude-code-skills, generative-art, art, agentic-coding, creative-coding, no-dependencies, canvas
Creator
sevenevesai
Size
42.7 MB
Stars
297
Updated
CommitSep 25Releasev1.0Sep 22
Age
25d
Commits · 90 Days