Original Description:
Animating with layers and copyPixels.
How was this done? Essentially, the patterns and shapes are created by taking an image, changing it, and then putting the resulting image back through the whole system again.
The animation is driven by a timeout object which calls an update method. This update method typically looks like this:
Note that the source images are passed to the effect objects by reference. The source image may be independant of each other, or one of them might point to the stage buffer - which is itself a combination of the two layers.
A second timeout object switches the effect objects at certain intervals, and sets up the source images and other parameters required by the new 'update' method.