by Corinna Kirsch on June 10, 2014
A tanuki is a type of Japanese raccoon dog. I’m only relatively familar with tanukis, and only thanks to Super Mario Brothers 3; when Mario put on a “tanooki suit” he could fly by whipping his tail in the air—the suit also let him turn into a nearly invincible statue. Tanukis for the win!
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by Paddy Johnson on May 15, 2014

Haruko Hirukawa has an entire page dedicated to animated gifs on her website, most of which are tiled. This represents the sole untiled GIF, and it’s posted because it’s meant to be seen individually. We can’t reproducing the tiling Hirukawa uses due to the column width of the blog, so for now, the other GIFs are out.
It’s worth mentioning that tiling is common amongst artists who work with the medium, and works off the same aesthetic principle as the multiple—more is better. Motion adds a layer of complexity to these works, which removes some of the random material use I’ve seen over the years from Tara Donavon influenced artists. You can’t tile just anything and expect it to look good.
As for this GIF, the enjoyment here is in looking at emojis that seem ready to break through the screen. Communication often feels animated and alive, and this GIF does a good job of capturing that.
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