think demux

It’s simple. It’s short. It moves. Is it back?

Best Friends by Christopher Smith.

It never technically went away. And maybe advertising gives me a blinkered view of the animated GIF.

It’s generally talked about as back-up – the low-fi/ if-all-else-fails option.

(I’m neither a designer nor a Flash animator, so tell me if this is baloney or codswallop.)

But could it be true? Has the animated GIF looped back around already?

Animation from Hipster Nascar by [Unknown].

I’ve seen some impressive, artistic animations in the last few months. But maybe I’ve just been looking more closely. Got a sweet tooth for 8-bit stylings and the perfect loop.

So now everyone’s throwing themselves into Twitter and getting all over microblogs, what about micromotion?

Where can I go to watch these pithy bits of visual play?

Is there a GIF underground?

I’ll kick this off and say that Loopable is one of the best GIF blogs I’ve found. (UPDATE: just found Sweet GIFs on TrendLand and the selections there are reeeal strong.)

But disagree to hell with me if you want – I’m just curious.

And I get the feeling that renewed love might show there’s more to this little format than meets the eye.