Narlin Beaty’s Polyominos June 2026

featuring a pair of short animated documentaries

My friend, Narlin Beaty has been diligently counting polyominos for (at least) a couple three weeks now.

I haven’t counted anything but I did make a movie showing the development of the 108 polyominos for $n = 7$ .

I used Narlin’s output list of free polyominos as my input.

The cell sequence is indicated by a red outline start, progressively darker cell fill, and a green outline finish.

Please notice that the user can vary the playback speed and can scroll by hand to allow a detailed look at the videos.

1) Pythonista Version

I wrote the animation code using Pythonista.

The 1-minute animation is a trimmed screenshot from my iPhone.

Built with Pythonista

2) Manim Jupyter Version

I wrote the animation code in a Jupyter notebook using manim.

The 3-minute animation is a trimmed screenshot using Microsoft Clipchamp.

Built with Manim

3) Surprise, another Manim Jupyter Version, a very brief bonus look at 9-ominos

Same animation code.

Same trimming of the 4-second animation.

Also built with Manim

Here's a basic polyomino reference