© Marcus Geduld

Animation #2 How large can a GIF be without slowing to a crawl? This one is over a hundred frames, but it still loads quickly and tells a complete story. The trick was to keep the number of colors to a minimum, and to move as little as possible. While there seems to be a lot going on, only the tiny alien, his little ship, and the outhouse door move. All the large elements—sky, grass, sun—are stationary, so the browser only has to load them once. And I try to make my animations fun to watch even as they are loading, frame by frame. That way, even if the filesize is big, the viewer will be too entertained to care how long he's waiting.