I
Exposure Chamber
Hold light against the latent specimen. Aperture determines which mineral color survives the exposure.
latent plate · ready for exposure
Why this act: God Rays becomes an exposure tool; animation records a decision instead of decorating a background.
II
Annealing Table
Name the exposed form, then commit it to heat. Editing is cheap; annealing is not.
complete exposure first
Why this act: Heatmap turns a personal alpha mask into a material event, not an interchangeable preset.
III
Edition Press
Build the proof in process order. Cyan, magenta, yellow, then key black. No skipped plates.
anneal the specimen before printing
plate order
Why this act: Halftone CMYK fixes every upstream choice into one artifact. Change the exposure or name and the proof must change.
Research → decision index
The official gallery already proves breadth. This page asks a narrower question: can three shaders behave like one instrument?
- Official gallery
- Catalogs and parameter panels are solved → one causal artifact, no raw inspector.
- Heatmap / alpha masks
- Personal marks carry meaning → the visitor’s word becomes material and persists.
- Performance reports
- Offscreen pause retains GPU allocation → one active mount, explicit context loss.
- Print-studio prior art
- Upload and before/after are familiar → ordered plate-making replaces comparison UI.
Rejected finalists
Pocket Biome lacked artifact continuity. Orbit Choir added sensor/audio permission cost. Liquid Metal’s synchronous preprocessing and context churn weakened the production story. A photo studio duplicated strong existing work.
Evaluation and limits
Required gates: exactly three dependent phases; one active shader mount; mobile canvas ≤750k pixels; reduced motion uses deterministic frames; WebGL failure reveals honest posters; no runtime CDN requests. Visual review scores signature image, discovery, continuity, responsive composition, motion authorship, and technical proof.
Sources and license
Built with @paper-design/shaders 0.0.77 by Paper, Apache-2.0. See the bundled LICENSE and NOTICE. Inspiration research included the official gallery, Aperture Shader Studio, FoldGradient, Pixel, and an independent Paper Heatmap port.