Vintage Animated GIFs by Laura Coyle

Do you remember when free e-cards were a thing on amazon’s site? Back in 1999 when we were fretting over Y2K? One of my favorite illustration projects - ever - was creating many of those animated gifs. I created about 60 e-cards in 2 years from October 1999- November 2001.

Some of the concepts are mine, others came by assignment from the creative team. The illustrator’s job was to find a solution for drawing and animating them in under 50k! (Yes, the internet was much slower then.) I created them in Adobe Illustrator and assembled the images in Macromedia Fireworks.

For customers not satisfied with the usual holidays like New Year’s and Halloween, there were loads of funny made-up holidays, so that every day could be special. Below is a selection of some of my favorites.