Pumpkinhead 2.3
A glitch art rack that runs in your browser.
What it is
Open a picture, stack effects on it, save a PNG. The effects are the old ways of breaking pictures, turned into controls you can push: sorting pixels, bending a picture as if it were sound, damaging a JPEG file and opening what is left, datamosh, mirrors and fractals, sigils ringed in clashing colour, and the picture poured as liquid paint.
Start in Looks, where every tile is your own picture with a finished chain on it. Press Hail Eris to let chance build one. Open Effects when you want every control.
Your pictures stay with you
Everything happens in this browser, on this device. A picture you open is never uploaded: the app has no server of its own, no accounts, no cookies, no analytics and no adverts.
It keeps three things in this browser’s own storage so they are here next time: your settings, the chain you were working on, and your recipe shelf. Clearing this site’s data removes them.
Installed to a home screen it works with no connection. Like any web page, the server that sends these files can see that they were asked for, and nothing more.
Who made it
Pumpkinhead is Nick Nova’s. He asked for it, said what it should do, brought his own glitch pictures and the methods behind them as the thing to reach, named it, and had the last word on what stayed.
All of its code was written by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, working to his direction: the engine and every effect, the controls, the four painted looks of the app, the sounds, the help text and the built-in recipes. Claude also drew the logo, after the pumpkin credited below. Where there was a choice to make, Claude set out the options and he made it.
The pumpkin in the top hat began as a doodle King Daggobert left behind in a McDonald’s, a glamour bomb for whoever found it. It is redrawn here with his blessing. The ringed sigil looks follow a way of drawing that is his.
The two sample pictures are Nick Nova’s own work.
Its home page, with a short how-to, is strawberrynapalm.org/pumpkinhead.
What it stands on
- Pixel Sort follows the idea of Kim Asendorf’s ASDF Pixel Sort.
- Bend is databending: a picture’s bytes read as sound, run through audio effects and read back, the way people have long done by opening pictures in a sound editor.
- File Break and Mosh come from the glitch and datamosh tradition of damaging compressed files on purpose.
- Terrain draws a height map the way voxel landscapes were drawn in early 1990s flight games.
- Rings measures distance with the method of Felzenszwalb and Huttenlocher.
- U-Law and A-Law are the telephone standard G.711.
- Kamea Sigil walks a sentence across the planetary squares, with the letter reduction Austin Osman Spare described.
- The chaos line takes its seasons, its calendar, the Law of Fives and the fnord from the Principia Discordia. Hail Eris.
Typefaces
Alfa Slab One, Anton, Barlow Condensed, Chivo, Chivo Mono, Patrick Hand, Share Tech Mono, Stardos Stencil, Syne and Zilla Slab are used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
Permanent Marker and Special Elite are used under the Apache License 2.0.
Each licence is kept beside the fonts: Alfa Slab One, Anton, Barlow Condensed, Chivo, Chivo Mono, Patrick Hand, Permanent Marker, Share Tech Mono, Special Elite, Stardos Stencil, Syne, Zilla Slab.
Terms
Pumpkinhead is free to use. What you make with it is yours, to keep, share or sell.
The app itself, its name and its artwork are © 2026 Nick Nova. All rights reserved. Please link to it rather than host a copy.
It is offered as it is, with no warranty. Keep your own copy of any picture you care about.