Glossary

Plain-English definitions for terms used throughout these docs. Every term here is also defined inline the first time it comes up in its own section — this page is just a place to look one up later.

Tileable / tiling

A pattern that lines up seamlessly with copies of itself, so a grid of them reads as one continuous surface instead of a grid of separate squares. Blitter's whole premise is generating small tileable animations.

Tile

The single repeating square unit — the thing that actually contains the animated pattern. A "grid" is many copies of the same tile, each just showing a different moment of its playback.

1-bit

Each pixel is either fully "on" (foreground color) or fully "off" (background color) — no in-between shades. This is what gives Blitter's output its crisp, graphic look (and why it compresses so well as a GIF).

Distance field

The bit of math under the hood: every pixel in a tile is given a number based on "how far" it is from some reference point or shape. The animation is just that field being revealed a little at a time. You'll never need to touch this directly — it's here so "why does Square grow from the middle" makes sense (its field is distance from the tile's center).

Checkerboard (modifier)

A toggle that splits a tile's pixels into two interleaved groups (like a checkerboard) and fills one group, then the other — so the tile fills in a speckled/interleaved way instead of one solid front.

ms/frame

Milliseconds per frame — how long each individual frame is shown on screen. It's a readout, not something you set directly: it's just Duration ÷ Frame count.

Loop cycle

One full run of the animation, start to finish, before it repeats. "Duration" is the length of one loop cycle.

Ping-pong

A playback mode that plays the sequence forward, then backward, instead of jumping straight back to frame 1 — so it "bounces" rather than snapping.

Hold / delay

A pause on the first or last frame of the cycle, before playback continues. Used to make a loop feel less frantic, or to build in a breathing moment.

Time shift

The system that makes tiles across the grid play at different points in the sequence at the same moment, rather than all in sync — this is what makes a grid look like a wave, ripple, or scattering effect rather than one big blinking square.

Stagger (previously called "Phase" in the app)

How much of one full loop cycle separates the earliest tile in a time-shift pattern from the latest one. At 0%, every tile is in sync. At 100%, the whole grid spans exactly one loop — while one side is just starting, the other is finishing. At 200%, that spread doubles, so the wave visibly takes two loops to cross the grid.

Grid Shape

A mask applied on top of the grid — only tiles inside the shape (a circle, heart, star, custom drawing, etc.) are drawn; the rest show the background. Independent of the Sequence and Time shift patterns, which keep animating underneath.

Library

Your private, on-device collection of saved setups. Not shared or public — think of it as your own sketchbook of animations you want to come back to.

.blit file

A small text (JSON) file that records every control's exact setting for one setup — not a rendered image or video. Opening one recreates the setup exactly, so it's how you back up, share, or reopen a setup later (including in a newer version of the app).

Sprite sheet

A single image containing every frame of an animation laid out in a grid, plus a small text file (the "manifest") describing how to play them back. A common format for using an animation inside a game engine or custom app.

Transparency (alpha)

Whether the background is see-through instead of a solid color, so the animation can sit on top of anything behind it. Only some export formats support this (see Exporting).

Intra-frame video (MP4 export)

Blitter's MP4 export encodes every frame independently (rather than most video, which only stores the differences between frames). This keeps pixel edges crisp and makes the loop point clean, at the cost of a larger file than a typical video.