The Twisted GIFs Of Animation Plaza
Where did the GIFs on Animation Plaza come from? Who made them? Who is the lunatic who threw away their best years illustrating an entire universe whose inhabitants live their lives in looping three second intervals? Reply All investigates.
At first glance, the cartoon GIFs on Animation Plaza look banal, like they could be on a Hallmark card. Dig deeper, though, and you discover obscure settings and bizarre themes. Like one where a man shakes his head in terror while holding a sign that says, "Taxes," all while, behind him, Uncle Sam tightens a screw in his butt.
The GIFs are crude, 3D cartoon style animations that look like the Ally McBeal baby or an early Pixar animation test. But there is a distinct style to the characters – they all look like they sprung from the mind of the same creator, like this caveman with a unibrow wearing Flintstone pants and a shark tooth necklace. The caveman's oversized hand brings a dollar bill to his mouth, chomps on it a few times, then takes it out of his mouth. It's bizarre.
When most people think of GIFs, they think of a moment snipped out of a movie or TV show that repeats, with no sound. Like a scene from Adventure Time or the part in Amelie where she melts from embarrassment or Mariah Carey blowing a kiss, looping forever. And they're handy as a shorthand to express some kind of emotion online.
The GIFs on Animation Plaza, though, aren't like that; the GIFs don't seem to be trying to express a simple emotion or idea. Whoever animated these GIFs decided that the world needed both a female gymnast waving an Austrian flag and Jesus taunting a devil at the edge of a cliff.
And they didn't make 100 of GIFs. This lunatic animator made tens of thousands of them.
It's as if somebody sat down and tried to make an animation of everything that happens in life, randomly–just picking and choosing as they went.
"I'll make a farmer struggling to push a tractor into the back of a truck. Oh, and then I'll make like a hillbilly being stung by a bee. Now, I'll make a baby dropping a cookie jar." It feels like someone haphazardly tried to illustrate every combination of noun and verb.
Where did these GIFs come from? Who made them? Who is the lunatic who threw away their best years illustrating an entire universe whose inhabitants live their lives in looping three second intervals? What story ties the devil to the ice skating couple to the kid who crashing his remote control airplane into a fire hydrant?
Reply All investigates.
(If you can't stand "GIF" pronounced with a hard "G," Reply All dubbed a special "JIF" version for you)
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