24 SPECIMENS · FIXED SUPPLY 1792 · PAIRED NVDA
Twenty-four creatures, drawn once and kept as text. Every specimen is a 32×32 grid of characters in a source file rather than an image, so the same data renders a card, a page, or a 512-pixel export without ever being redrawn.
Eight body archetypes, three stages each. No two lines share a silhouette: at thirty-two pixels a specimen has to be identifiable from its outline alone, and that single constraint decided every shape in the roster. Four types split the collection — PUMP, DUMP, FLAT, VOID — and a type only ever changes colour, never form.
Each line runs three stages and stops. A stage advances by growing the thing that already defines it — the wick gets longer, the sack gets heavier, the shell adds a course — so the last stage still reads as the first. Stage sets weight. Nothing else about a specimen changes when it advances.
Three states, one palette. A specimen is never redrawn to show its condition: the grid stays fixed and the colours are transformed. STARVED drains saturation and lifts the body toward paper. SWOLLEN pushes the other way and lays a gold rim along the outermost pixels of the mass.
The outline never moves and never lightens. It is the one thing every state has to keep, because it is the only reason the creature is still legible at thirty-two pixels.
WHAT CHANGES
Body, light, shade, accent and mouth slots are recoloured. The eye takes a flat override — dull ink when starved, gold when swollen.
WHAT NEVER CHANGES
The grid, the outline, and the pupil. Feeding state is a function of the palette; it can never alter a single pixel of shape.
The full collection, in dex order. Every frame is generated from the specimen's own grid — nothing here is a stored picture.