Palette animation is a technique to simulate motion by rapidly changing the colors of selected entries in a color palette. An application can carry out palette animation by creating a logical palette that contains "reserved" entries and then using the AnimatePalette function to change colors in those reserved entries.
An application creates a reserved entry in a logical palette by setting the peFlags member of the PALETTEENTRY structure to the PC_RESERVED flag. Once this logical palette is selected and realized, the application can call the AnimatePalette function to change one or more reserved entries. If the given palette is associated with the active window, Windows updates the colors on the screen immediately.