FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Entertainment

[Best of 2013]: The Year in GIFs

Artists Reed + Rader pick the best GIF moments from this past year

It may be the Year of the Selfie, but GIFs were just as omnipresent in 2013. From the outdoor GIF festival in San Francisco and the GIFpop tool that makes custom cards out of animated GIFs using lenticular printing, to a throwback, analog (meaning tangible!) GIF machine, the meme-ready format made waves across the internet over the last twelve months.

To celebrate the vast variety of GIFs that appeared in 2013, The Creators Project asked design studio Reed + Rader to make a list of their favorite moving images and wiggly stills.

Advertisement

These two are GIFsperts--not only did they release some epic stuffed animal GIFs this year, but they even designed 3D fashion GIFs using the Unreal Engine, which may indicate the next frontier of fashion spreads.The image format may be over-saturated online, but Reed + Rader picked the standouts (and The Creators Projected included some future-thinking interpretations of the GIF, as well). Get GIF'ed up below.

Reed + Rader's GIF Guide to 2013:

Facts:

Steve Wilhite, the inventor of the GIF, accepted his Webby award with year with this simple video.  The debate is over.

Still don’t want to accept the truth? Check out what happened on last week’s Jeopardy:

Sports x GIFs

Sports GIFs are the best. They punctuate a game and allow us to re-witness athletes greatest, or worst, moments over and over and over and over again.

Perhaps the greatest moment in sports (and entertainment) this year was when DeAndre Jordan dunked over Brandon Knight, causing basketball fans to go crazy on the Internet. Soon after the dunk, Brandon Knight’s Wikipedia page was updated to read “On March 10, 2013 Knight died in a game vs the Los Angeles Clippers.  The cause of death was determined to be DeAndre Jordan.”

The Dunk:

RIP Brandon Knight

A Meme is born: 

Brooklyn Nets coach Jason Kidd spills his drink giving the Nets some extra time to ice the opposing teams freethrow shooter and for a hopeful play to win the game (spoiler: it failed).  Not many people caught it at first, but minutes later GIFs spread, proving that Kidd obviously say “hit me." He was fined $50,000.

Advertisement

Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid dances through a hallway and the Internet turns him into the Kool-Aid man.

News x GIFs

The Chelyabinsk meteor hit causing people to release videos which ends up as amazing gifs. Often times it’s a struggle to get people to click a play button on a video. The GIF is great because it just plays and plays and plays to perfectly sum up the event.

Rob Ford was in the news a lot this year. While BuzzFeed gave us several reason to be thankful for the Toronto Mayor and crack enthusiast, the most telling Ford moment might be embodied in this beautiful GIF:

Art x GIFs

Banksy’s New York residency was fun this year, but equally great are these gifs that ABVH made.

ABVH then made these great custom GIFs based on Batman Comics.

Nick Cave’s Soundsuits danced through Grand Central Station and Mr. GIF brought it to life in GIF form where they never stop shaking.

Dain Fagerholm just continued to be amazing with his wiggle GIF illustrations brought to life.

We started doing a lot of work in 3D this past year. We made GIFs of our stuffed animal family to bring them to life, and then told you how much we love them (as did The Creators Project in an article):

We also started using the Unreal Gaming Engine for our work creating videos and GIFs. Here is a Halloween story we did, creating the entire environment in 3D. [See more of these next-gen fashion images here]:

Also worth mentioning is GIFPUMPER, a collaborative GIF sharing site that allows users to upload GIFs and arrange the 2D assets in 3D space. You can also navigate through environments made of GIFs. Even though GIFPUMPER was made by Slava Balasanov in 2011 it’s still awesome and continues to go strong.

Advertisement

Cats x GIFs

We have four cats and love them dearly. This list would not be complete without some cat GIFS. Though feline-focused GIFs are created every day, here are two of our favorites:

Who says cats can’t do the Harlem Shake?

And this creepy cat is creepy, but awfully talented too.

For more of Reed + Rader's awesome work, head over to their site, here.

And for more major GIF moments from the past year take a look at some past articles from The Creators Project:

Watch Entire Movies in a Single GIF

The Outdoor GIF Festival

[VIDEO] Mr. GIF Teaches You How To Make Stereoscopic GIFs

Renaissance Paintings Get GIF-ified

[Now You Can Hold GIFs With The Giphoscope](http:// http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/the-giphoscope)

Say Hello To Jesus In GIF Form

GIF-Heavy Artist Duo Mike And Claire Pick Up Where "Tim And Eric" Left Off 

[Make A Cameo Appearance In Home Alone With This Handy GIF Maker](http:// http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/make-a-cameo-appearance-in-home-alone-with-this-handy-gif-maker)