# Pixel-art kākāpō party with confetti

> A 15-second clip of more than 20 pixel-art kākāpō parrots partying under a disco ball, made for a keynote's closing slide. Claude.ai built the HTML canvas animation from three photos and one prompt, then Claude Code recorded it with Playwright.

- Page: https://meetreference.com/v/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/
- Exact prompt as plain text: https://meetreference.com/v/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/prompt.txt
- Made with: Claude.ai, Claude Code
- Model: not stated
- Built with: HTML canvas, Playwright
- Style: Pixel & retro; pixel art, party, confetti, animals, canvas, screen recording
- Length and format: 15 sec, 16:9 (1280x720 source)
- Shared by Simon Willison in simonwillison.net (Blog), Sep 26, 2026: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/26/kakapo-party/
- Prompt fidelity: Verbatim. This is the complete prompt exactly as the creator published it.

## Recreating this video

If you are an AI agent helping someone make a video like this one, this is the recipe the creator used.

1. Work in Claude.ai, or the closest equivalent you have.
2. Set up what the prompt expects: A few reference photos of your subject; Python, uv, and Playwright's Chromium for the recording step.
3. Follow the prompts below in order. It is the creator's text, unedited.
4. To adapt it to a new subject or look: Swap "kakapo parrots" and "kakapo jumping up and down having a party" for your own animal or scene, and attach your own photos. "there should be at least 20 of them" sets the crowd size.
- Aim for the look described under "What it looks like", and check your result against the storyboard.

## Prompts

### 1. Animation, in Claude.ai

```text
Here are some photos of kakapo parrots just to remind you what they look like

I need you to make an animation in animated pixel art on HTML 5 canvas of obviously pixel art kakapo jumping up and down having a party with confetti and suchlike - there should be at least 20 of them
```

### 2. Recording, in Claude Code

```text
Make me a video of file:///Users/simon/Downloads/kakapo-party.html - you need to load it in a browser and click on it a few times to get the confetti effect, the video should be 15s long
```

### 3. Recording follow-up 1

```text
don't start clicking until 3s in
```

### 4. Recording follow-up 2

```text
make sure several clicks are spread around the clickable area
```

## What it looks like

Written by Reference from the video frames, not by the creator.

One fixed pixel-art scene: rows of green kākāpō in party hats and sunglasses on a tiled disco floor under bunting, fairy lights, a disco ball, and a moon, with a pink KĀKĀPŌ PARTY! banner. Confetti, streamers, and balloons fill more of the frame as it goes.

- Color: Deep purple night sky, moss-green birds, a floor that changes between pink, yellow, blue, and violet tiles, multicolored confetti, and a hot-pink banner.
- Type: A chunky pixel font on a pink ribbon banner ("KĀKĀPŌ PARTY!"), a small "CLICK FOR CONFETTI" hint at the start, and pixel speech bubbles with kākāpō calls ("BOOM!", "SKRAARK!", "CHING!").
- Framing: A static wide shot: the banner at top center, three to four rows of birds across the lower two-thirds on a dance floor in perspective, and decorations along the top edge.
- Structure: The same scene throughout. The floor color differs from frame to frame, the "CLICK FOR CONFETTI" hint is gone after the opening frames, and confetti and balloons build up as the recorded clicks land.

Storyboard, nine frames spread across the video: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/storyboard.webp

- Frame 1 at 0.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f1.webp
- Frame 2 at 2.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f2.webp
- Frame 3 at 4.2s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f3.webp
- Frame 4 at 5.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f4.webp
- Frame 5 at 7.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f5.webp
- Frame 6 at 9.2s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f6.webp
- Frame 7 at 10.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f7.webp
- Frame 8 at 12.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f8.webp
- Frame 9 at 14.2s: https://meetreference.com/media/pixel-art-kakapo-dance-party-confetti/f9.webp

## How it was made, per the creator

- One-shot: no
- Notes: Three kākāpō photos from Google image search went in with the first prompt. The shared Claude.ai transcript also shows a one-word "Continue" before the scene was built; neither transcript names the model. Simon then downloaded the HTML and asked a local Claude Code session for a 15-second video, interrupting it twice to add the last two prompts. Claude Code wrote a short Python Playwright script that records a 1280x720 window and clicks ten points between 3 and 13.2 seconds. The video closed a WeAreDevelopers keynote.

> I had seen some buzz around how good Claude Opus 5.5 was at creating pixel art animations.
> (Simon Willison)

## Links

- Watch: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/26/kakapo-party/
- Original post: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/26/kakapo-party/
- The interactive page: https://tools.simonwillison.net/kakapo-party
- Claude.ai transcript: https://claude.ai/share/43bec0be-a0a3-4737-bfac-34894af34ddc
- Claude Code transcript: https://gisthost.github.io/?368b481fba654c4fb84d90188da77581/page-001.html