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The Morning GIF: Beauty in the breakdown

“I’m with Coco” artist walks us through his process.

Photo of Lorraine Murphy

Lorraine Murphy

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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.

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This bluebird is really breaking it down.

With Sean Godsey’s Charlie Chaplin GIF, we were able to deconstruct the GIF and show the artistic process. Mike Mitchell’s bluebird GIF does that in one image.

Mitchell is the creator of the iconic “I’m with Coco” image that was such a social media phenomenon before Conan O’Brien’s comeback. Mitchell has a powerful Web presence, with a Facebook page boasting almost 12,000 likes, a Twitter profile with 13,359 followers (and a GIF avatar!), a website, and an ecommerce shop.

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In this GIF, each layer demonstrates one step in the process, from pencil sketch, through successive layers of color and detail, to the finished, lifelike image, rich in shading and depth. It gives non-artists new appreciation for the amount of effort a piece like this entails. Indeed, the 3,474 notes it has received since it was posted July 10 are a testament to its impact.

 
The Daily Dot