Our loveable animated GIF has come a long way, baby, since the obnoxious “under construction” signs so prevalent on web pages back in the 1990. They were SO last century. But let’s bring the idea forward!

Make yourself your own, sophisticated personal animated GIF to show whenever you might be messing around with the gears, or the innards, or the unicorns, or with whatever you’ve got on the treadmill to keep your blog humming behind the scenes. And give yourself an extra bonus point if you find and use someone else’s CC-licenced image. You need to do the attribution and all that good stuff to claim the point.  Model appropriate blog maintenance, great design aesthetics, and a conscientious web-citizenship sharing ethic all at once.

Got it? Are you up for it? Are you ready? Go!  Be sure to share your result. We aren’t likely to actually see it in use — ’cause we all keep our blogs up and running most of the time, and only poke around in the inner workings in the middle of the night ;-) — so make sure to show it to us when you’ve got it done.

To-do lists can help us get stuff done. An animated gif of your completed to-list is evidence of your awesome ability to get stuff done.

1) Use software on your computer, an app on your phone or an old fashioned pen and paper to create a to-do list of tasks or things you need to complete.

2) Start a task or thing on your list. Complete it. For each completed task or thing, take a screen capture or photo and then continue to work through the list.

3) Once you have completed each task or thing on your list, compile your screen captures or photos and then publish as an animated gif.

4) Share your achievement with the world.

It’s often unpredictable! It frequently changes rapidly. Every once it a while, it’s downright spooky! Yes, it’s the weather, man! Whether you are a weather nut or not, take up the challenge to GIF something interesting with the weather. Maybe it’s a weather map? Maybe it’s a weather storm? Maybe it’s a weather news-caster-person, man! But find something cool, and give us something real to talk about when we talk about the weather!!

Search the murderous world of Alfred Hitchcock and find a particularly horrifying moment to be preserved in an animated GIF

Jim created the excellent Animate 2600 GIF assignment. Now it’s time to riff on it and remix & mashup classic 8-bit video games from the Atari 2600 era. Mashup two or more different games into the same animated GIF.

Explosive action, athleticism, skill, strategy, teamwork, triumph and repetition are some elements that make up sporting activity. Choose a sporting activity and then make an animated gif that represents one or more of these elements.