Close Pixelate

Close Pixelate is a canvas-based project that manipulates the pixels of a portrait to come up with a new image. Originally created by David Desandro:

Inspired by American portrait painter Chuck Close, this script converts an image into a pixelated version using an HTML5 canvas element. It’s basically a simple demo for canvas’ imageData functionality.

This is one of my favourite canvas experiments. There may not be a whole lot going on behind the scenes, but the results are really beautiful.

If you want to play with close pixelate yourself, check it out on github. Or, for more instant gratification, try The Pixelator, a UI built around close pixelate by Ben Keen.

Warm fuzzy internet aside: David also credits a presentation by CreativeJS team member, Rob Hawkes for getting him started with canvas and imageData in the original post about the project. How cool is that?