Oh, Hello Exciting News.

Oh, hello 5 day weekend.

Oh, hello embroidery book that arrived today.

Oh, hello new yellow external hard drive that the mailman brought me.

Oh, hello 88° Cleveland, such a nice improvement.

Oh, hello organized Safari bookmarks (such an accomplishment).

Oh, hello oodles of animation ideas.

Oh, hello almost complete blog makeover.

Oh, hello brand new project!

This summer, when I was far too exhausted to make a proper pixilation with Miss Mia Rose, I found myself creating animated .GIFs. But these weren't the typical dancing-teddy-bears, sparkly-hearts .GIFs you see in those emails forwarded to you by your family members. I realized that these little tiny animations, sometimes a mere 2 frames, had a lot of potential. Creating these .GIFs helped me brainstorm ideas and kept me constantly thinking about motion. So I decided to make it official.

THE RULES FOR ME: Create at least one animated .GIF every day for a year, with the majority of them being hand drawn or stop motion (I'll have a few lazy/busy days, I'm sure.) Post them to the Tumblr blog set up for the project as they are completed.
THE RULES FOR YOU: Grab a .GIF! In this page, I will post (as many as I can) with codes for you. They are formatted to be 220 pixels wide, perfect for a Blogger sidebar. All you need to do is copy the code in the box, go to edit the layout of your blog, add a HTML/Javascript widget, and paste the code. You are welcome to grab them off of the main blog and a higher resolution and post wherever you'd like. HOWEVER, please link back to me! Part of this project involves me exploring what people are interested in and how these will spread. So help them spread by sharing them (and the source!) with your friends.

Got it? The first couple will be logos of sorts, but then I'll start mixing it up. If you're on Tumblr, feel free to follow me! And definitely reblog all you want.

In other, related news, you may have noticed I've been working on the design of this blog. The main reason for this was to make it more animated. I have a new header, which, if you rollover, it changes to another image. Similar buttons for external links (like if you wanna watch some of my animations) and pages have some fun images when you hover over them. I set up a proper ABOUT section, a page dedicated to PAPER AIRPLANE .GIFs (where you can copy & paste the code for your sidebars, and also read more about the project), a CONTACT page, to which I am also adding [somewhat redundant but animated and thus justified] external links. I also have a BLOGROLL in the works, which will also include links to some great artists I admire.

So please, have a look around. And tell me... What do you think of the new layout and animated features? What do you think of the new .GIF project? Do you have any ideas for animated .GIFs you would like to see? Leave a comment and let me know!

Happy September!