Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.
If Mean Girls is the film version of the “I ching,” capturing the essence of the human spirit and the movie by which all of life’s mysteries can be solved, artist Everett Gunther’s Matrix-inspired GIFs are the equivalent on Reddit.
Gunther’s GIFs perfectly capture the tone and feeling most people get when visiting the social news site. And they do so with stunning 3-D visual effects.
Since last summer, Gunther, 19, has created a series of six different animations where he takes memorable scenes from The Matrix and adds text and arrows to explain Reddit’s culture and structure. For example, in the last GIF of the series posted Thursday night, Gunther used the final apartment hall shootout scene featuring Neo and the agents. Only instead of the agents shooting bullets at Neo, Gunther swapped them out for some 3-D downvotes. (The popularity of content on Reddit is determined by a public voting system. The more upvotes a post or comment receives, the higher probability it has of reaching the top of a subreddit or thread. And the more upvotes a comment or post receives, the more karma points that user receives.)
“Good, funny GIFs are visual metaphors for unexpected things (like Reddit karma), and the Matrix is literally filled with visual metaphors to draw from,” Gunther told the Daily Dot. “If I was to ever go with another movie to work with, it would have to make similar use of those visual metaphors that make the high concept GIFs possible (like “The Truth about Reddit,” my personal favorite of my Matrix GIFs.)”
To date Gunther, who goes by prannisment on the site, has only submitted posts to Reddit a couple dozen times. But thanks to his Matrix GIFs, he’s become a household name around Reddit’s r/GIFs community.
“Prannisment is the most talented GIF maker on reddit,” phonedojo commented on his latest GIF.
“At this point your gifs are automatic front page material, I think YOU are the one,” major_burnside added.
With college out for the summer, and the Matrix well nearly dried up, Gunther thinks he’s found his next movie to GIF.
“I’ve tinkered with ideas involving the movie Inception, for example. There would be a lot to draw from there.”
GIFs by Everett Gunther | Photo via IMDb