Clockwork Goldfish Color Cycling

Mark Ferrari's original artwork is back!

The original Heaven & Earth puzzles included color cycling artwork from Mark Ferrari, creator of the Living Worlds art. Not full scenes; just playing pieces. Even so, you can see his amazing ability to pack detail into just a few pixels.

When I brought the first puzzle from Heaven & Earth to the web, back in 2007 (wow, almost 20 years now!), low resolution computer graphics were still something we were “growing out of”, so for the Figure Ground puzzle I made new high resolution tiles. They served their purpose just fine, but of course they don’t have that Mark Ferrari spark.

Now that we are further from the old-school pixel art days, there’s a much stronger recognition of the beauty and artistry of that art form. And of course the Living Worlds app has reconnected a lot of people with Mark’s work and color cycling in general. It feels like it’s only right that we restore his original color cycling playing pieces to the Clockwork Goldfish puzzles!

So, come check them out... Sliding Blocks and Identity Maze were already using his original artwork (since I did them more recently) but now I’ve updated them to use his color cycling as well. For Figure Ground, I’ve replaced my 2007 tiles with Mark’s original color cycling tiles. For that puzzle in particular, it’s quite a change, since all of the tiles color cycle; adds to the already disorienting nature of the game!

Again, it’s just a few playing pieces, but even so, you can see his genius in every pixel. I hope you appreciate them as much as I do!