this is an animation created for the c64 demo 'musik run/stop'.

it is based on multicolor charmode, which is basically font using graphic elements instead a/b/c. the mode itself is more restricted than usual bitmap because one charset shows about 25% of a 320x200px screen size and it is not possible to use the whole color palette (except software based color splits). in this case the screen is split into 3 parts to use 3 individual character sets (a charset contains up to 256 chars).

what makes this special is that it's possible to use low and high resolution the same time, each character can be used repeatedly and it is very effective for the coder. perfect for game backgrounds.

basic restrictions are:
screen size is 40:25 characters, each character can be specified as hires or multicolor.
multicolor char is 4x8px with double-wide pixels up to 4 colors,
hires char is 8x8px with 1:1 pixels limited to 2 colors.
background and 2 colors for mc-chars are fix for the whole screen and can be chosen free from the 16 color palette.
one color can be individually used for each char but only from the first 8 of the palette.

well, it seems complicated on first sight. so here is a png that shows the picture elements in parts:

http://lindau.name/media/workstages/acappella_chars.png