The Internet is flourishing with new artists every day, and GIF artists have changed the game in the last few years, thanks to the popularity of Tumblr and blogging in general. Here, we're introducing 25 GIF Artists You Should Know, who continue to defy the limits of art and technology. Whether you pronounce it "GIF" or "JIF," you'll want to know the pixel masters who have taken animation to another level.
RELATED: 25 Internet Artists You Need to Know
Sophie Alda
Sophie Alda
East London-based illustrator, painter, and prop maker Sophie Alda weaves in her other skills and her obvious penchant for vivid colors and cartoons to create gifs of hot dogs, melons, and barely-clad characters melting away—a common theme in much of her artwork.
Peekasso
Peekasso
New York-based Internet artist Peekasso does a little bit of everything. One reoccurring theme his GIFs is an image of Homer Simpson curled up on a couch against moving surroundings. His GIFs ranges from hilarious pics of Beyonce, buried beneath Doritos, edited clips from cartoons like Beavis and Butthead, and other manipulations on fashion ads and stuff found in pop culture.
Hateplow
Hateplow
We've got a modern day Michelangelo on our hands. Zack Dougherty, better known by his Tumblr username hateplow, makes GIFs that will make you see Greek sculptures in a whole new light. Dougherty snaps images of figurative sculptures then pixelates them, giving them geometric edges. Fascinating.
Emilio Gomariz
Emilio Gomariz
Emilio Gomariz, who is originally from Spain, lives and works in London, but you'll probably find most of his artwork online. As one of the masterminds behind the Maadonna website—Google it, you'll click and stare in fascination—Gomariz uses coding and his knowledge of the 'net to create digital art, influenced by everything online and pop culture as he sees it. He also experiments with videos and glitches to make super trippy products out of our favorite Dragon Ball Z clips.
Evan Roth
Evan Roth
Evan Roth is "the biggest Bad Ass Mother Fucker" on the Internet... No, seriously. If you google "Bad Ass Mother Fucker," he's the first to show up. The 35-year-old Paris-based artist from Okemos, Michigan creates prints, sculptures, and digital media that stem from his interest in hacker culture and pop culture. You can find his art on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art.
Jon Cates
Jon Cates
Jon Cates' selfie game is on point, taking Photobooth pics to a whole other level. A graduate of Illinois State University and Danube University in Austria, Cates is currently teaching at the film, video, new media and animation department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And it's no wonder. All of his selfies are GIFs of him throwing up the sign of the horns and being an overall badass.
Julian Glander
Julian Glander
Proud resident of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Julian Glander utilizes vibrant colors and simplistic shapes to create quirky caricatures and illustrations for t-shirts, posters, videos, and animated GIFs, of course.
INSA
INSA
Artist and designer INSA hails from a background of graffiti and street art—and you can tell from his GIFs too. This guy takes progressive shots of the murals he's working on and puts them all together so viewers can watch his street art come to life. He's even got his own line of heels called INSA HEELS and designed for brand like Kangol, Kid Robot and Oki-Ni. Trill.
Lacey Micallef
Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg
Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg
Photographers Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg collaborated in 2009 and gave birth to a new kind of digital photography they dubbed the Cinemagraph. The couple and artists document images from throughout their travels to create gorgeous film photographs of subjects ranging from models on the runway, the streets of Manhattan, and bunches of cherry tomatoes.
Website
Pamela Reed + Matthew Rader
Pamela Reed + Matthew Rader
Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader, known collectively as Reed + Rader, are a tag team of New York-based fashion photographers. They have snapped photos of models clad in high fashion brands ranging from Oscar De La Renta to Marc Jacobs. However, the two stand out for mingling still photography with film and animation for more interactive, evocative fashion shoots.
GIFFriends (Alex Thebez, Michael Fivis, Peter Marquez, and Marisa Gertz)
GIFFriends (Alex Thebez, Michael Fivis, Peter Marquez, and Marisa Gertz)
Comprised of four friends, GIFFriends takes photos of common people doing everyday things and breathes life into the captured images by framing them and tweaking them so that shake and swivel.
Skip Hursh
Skip Hursh
Triple threat Skip Hursh is a Brooklyn-based illustrator, animator, and a designer who works as one of the on-air designers and animators for Nickelodeon. He has made pieces for a monthly GIF project called 15 Folds. His works intertwine geometric shapes and bold colors--a quality common in his other illustrations and typography.
Dain Fagerholm
Dain Fagerholm
Seattle-based Dain Fagerholm, also known as DAiN 8), uses markers and ink pens to sketch out large bubble-eyed caricatures, the first stage of his "stereographic gifs." He then brings these drawings to life, tweaking the images so the background and creatures flash and twitch as 3D GIFs.
Qil Me
Qil Me
Creator of both qil.me and suk.me (the latter is NSFW—just an FYI), the artist who goes by the moniker of QIL makes a number of images, videos, GIFs, and animated PNGs viewable only in certain browsers. Though this artist remains a sort of enigma, qil.me's got a large fanbase on Tumblr and has created GIFs for A$AP Mob (pictured above), V magazine, and others.
The GIF Connoisseur
The GIF Connoisseur
The GIF Connoisseur, like many artists out there, uses Tumblr as platform to showcase animated images. The GIFs on the connoissuer's page all feature a man dressed in a blue suit with his back facing viewers, standing motionless against varying backdrops of skyscrapers, video games, and darker images.
Manuel Fernandez
Manuel Fernandez
Founder and curator of online gallery Domain Galley, Manuel Fernandez creates prints, videos, Internet-based works that reflect his own ideas and criticism about technology and pop culture. His works have been displayed all over the world and are currently exhibited at the Artbase of Rhizome at the New Museum NYC.
Yoshi Sodeoka
Yoshi Sodeoka
Yoshi Sodeoka, who creates both prints and videos, was born in Hiroshima and grew up in Yokohama. In 1989, he moved to NYC to study at the Pratt Institute, armed with years of art education. In fact, his childhood art mentor introduced him to bands like the Rolling Stones and Sex Pistols. Both a musician and visual artist, Sodeoka attributes his loose, psychedelic style to his taste in '70s progressive rock—traces of which can also be found in his GIFs. His videos and prints work can be found in the permanent collection at the Museum of the Moving Image and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Joe Hamilton
Joe Hamilton
Joe Hamilton is a Melbourne-based artist, whose interactive moving images explore the interplay between technology and the natural world, between the online and offline.
Jaime Martinez
Jaime Martinez
After captivating the world with his wistful images and street style photography on Fuck You Draculas, Jaime Martinez has also made a name for himself in the GIF-making department as well—and M.I.A. has noticed. Signed to M.I.A.'s label N.E.E.T., the 35-year-old from Monterrey takes his snapshots to the next level, adjusting them slightly so they glitter and twitch.
Ryder Ripps
Ryder Ripps
Speaking of M.I.A., meet Ryder Ripps, who has also collaborated with and made GIFs for the British recording artist. Ripps, born July 7, 1989 in New York, is kind of a big deal when it comes to the Internet. After Yahoo! shut down GeoCities, homeboy created Internet Archaeology to archive old content in 2009. He also co-founded Dump.fm, a site which allows users to communicate in real-time with images. Much of his work comments on and are reminiscent of the both the Internet today and what it used to be a decade ago.
James Myrick
James Myrick
James Myrick first went viral when a photo of him donning a spiral beard hit the Interwebz. Also known as Arctic Fox, Myrick is known primarily for his roles as a songwriter and indie film maker, but he's apparently got a knack for pixels too. His piece Starbucks in Starbucks fractal was featured in Moving the Still.
Haydiroket
Haydiroket
Mert Keskin, better known to the art world as Haydiroket, garnered fame after acquiring a large following on Tumblr, eventually moving on to become the company's GIF editor. His career in art, however, started in the mid-90s as an artist for Demoscene groups. Influenced by the gaming consoles and computers of yesteryear, Haydiroket's animated works depict modern ideas with old school games like Pac-Man and Street Fighter.
Claire Marie Christerson
Claire Marie Christerson
NYC native Claire Marie Christerson is currently studying at the School of Visual Arts. As a student, her portfolio already boasts collages, videos and clothing as well as GIFs. Inspired by "mystical creatures" and "bling," her eclectic GIFs are a chock full of unicorns, Lisa Frank, Hello Kitty and all things cute—with a touch of the weird.
Hector Llanquín
Hector Llanquin
Back in '03, Chilean artist Hector Llanquin launched an experimental online label called cumshaw records with a friend, which landed them in the V Bienal of Mercosur in Porto Allegre. Afterwards, Llanquin enrolled in a few classes to up his PC-game and established his name as Megajoy in the electronic music scene. Today, he continues to defy the limits of Internet media, creating trippy pieces like smeltey.gif, pictured above, which was selected by Nicola Formichetti to be featured in Moving the Still.
