New video! This one is sort of a follow-up to my last video, though this time I explore breaking PNG files.

This topic proved to be a bit more complex than the last one, and one negative is that the coolest stuff is at the end of the video, which most viewers won’t see. Essentially, you can create “fake” or “custom” filters and see what errors/glitches look like by re-encoding the glitched data back into scan line space and then re-encoding it using a real PNG filter. If what I just said made no sense, well, that’s why it’s near the end of the video. But below I’ll share a few images from my favorite custom filter.

Those don’t even look like images with glitches to me. They look like images that have had paint splatted on them. And the fact that you can create any filter you want and glitch it is really fascinating. It feels like there’s so much that could be explored here.

Another topic near the end of the video is glitched animated PNG files. Most people probably don’t even know that animated PNGs are a thing, but they’ve had full browser support since 2020. They weren’t officially recommended by the W3C until last year though. Apparently the PNG Development Group didn’t want animation to be part of the spec (until recently). However, I think it’s a big win for PNGs to support animation. They’re smaller, support more colors, and have better transparency support. Plus, they look cool when they’re glitched:

Anyway, check out the video if you’re curious as to how all of the works. If you’re interested in my inspiration, see The Art of the PNG Glitch, and if you want to glitch your own images check out my Image Glitcher or this script I created to glitch images (the latter allows for more fine grained control).

2026/02/13 Edit: Pressing the “Hype” button on a video really helps it. If you found this interesting and enjoyed the video, please hype it (the button only appears on mobile)!