Kaleidoscope
Turn a photo into a looping kaleidoscope animation that breaks the image into 2×2, 4×4 and 8×8 tiles that glitch around, then settles a quarter turn further. Use when the user wants this kaleidoscope or tile-glitch effect on an image.
Use it in Tella
- Open any video in Tella, then open the AI chat.
- Paste the skill:
tellahq/community-skills/kaleidoscope - Then ask for what you want.
Use it in Claude Code
Add it to Claude Code, or any agent that reads skills:
npx skills add tellahq/community-skills --skill kaleidoscopeInstructions
What the AI chat follows when the skill is pasted, from its SKILL.md.
Kaleidoscope
Copy the effect in references/reference.mp4 onto the user's image.
The effect
- The photo fills a square frame.
- It splits into a 2×2 grid, then 4×4, then 8×8. At each step the tiles glitch: they jump, swap and flicker for a few frames.
- The tiles come back together as the whole photo, turned a quarter turn further than before.
- Then it repeats, so the end of one turn matches the start of the next and it loops cleanly. Two turns take about 8.6 s.
Steps
- Watch the reference before building anything. Pull frames with ffmpeg (
ffmpeg -i references/reference.mp4 -vf fps=4,scale=320:-1 frame_%03d.png, or a contact sheet withtile) and look at them withview_image, so the pacing and tile steps match. - Use the image the user names or attaches. If there isn't one, ask which image to use. Don't pick one yourself.
- Build it as a freeform motion graphic. Load
tella-motion-designfirst for the shared rules. - Preview the result and compare it with the reference: grid steps, glitch length, the quarter turn, and a seamless loop.
Making it your own
- Fewer or more turns change the length.
- Faster tile steps make it more frantic; slower ones make it calmer.
- A different final grid (for example stopping at 4×4) gives a chunkier look.
Files
The other files in the skill, such as reference videos it copies from.