The Daily Dot is proud to present a new way to spread holiday cheer: GIF cards. Each business day leading up to Christmas, we’ll be presenting two or more fun and easy-to-share GIFs to get you and your loved ones in the spirit of the season. To see our entire catalog, visit us on Tumblr.
When GIF artist Nick Kegeyan is in need of artistic inspiration, he trawls Facebook or turns on TV shows like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
For the two exclusive GIF cards created just for the holidays, Kegeyan, 18, reflected on his lifelong love of snow and Christmas cheer.
“I ended up missing the snow in Chicago, so I’m hoping for some snow here in New York,” Kegeyan told the Daily Dot. “The second [card] was all about Christmas icons, I love Christmas trees, but me and my girlfriend couldn’t get on in Chicago because our cats have weird allergies, plus neither of us are there at the moment. (No worries, though; the cats are being taken care of.)”
Kegeyan, a new-media student at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, is a GIF connoisseur whose original animations capture the essence of ’90s computer art. They often feature floating images of food, bright 3-D shapes, and large text bouncing from side to side. The GIFs quirkiness has helped the artist have his worked featured numerous times on Reblorg, an art hub run by Tumblr’s editorial team featuring animations like NASA’s Curiosity rover driving on a rainbow road.
Many of his has GIFs are also reminiscent of the days of GeoCities, a popular Web community created in the 1990s. He has preserved many of these dialup-era relics in a 25GB folder of images on his desktop. He uses this collection as inspiration for extracrispy, his Tumblr blog.
While Kegeyan grew up celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah, New Year’s is now the holiday that brings the family together.
“This year the holidays are about memories, family, friends, and relaxation. This year my childhood house is being sold this is probably the last time I’ll be here so I’m just reminiscing with my dad,” he said. “It’s really important to my dad that we’re together for ball dropping and champagne popping. As far as celebrating goes, we don’t do anything to crazy. We do marathon the Godfather movies every year though.”
