Animator Ori Toor’s captivating series of looping, lo-fi gifs

Tel-Aviv-based animator Ori Toor’s ongoing series of gifs titled Loopism started as a way for the animator to get back into moving image. “When I started doing animation after finishing college, I was doing mostly music videos and projects. I got a bit tired of that and started doing more illustration work,” Ori explains. “But eventually I really missed animation – I feel like it’s in my blood. I’ve always loved loops, so Loopism was a way to get myself to commit to a format and see if there were people out there to appreciate what I do.”

For his latest set of gifs Ori has adopted an analogue and lo-fi aesthetic, that’s strangely charming. “I wanted them to look like something similar to the feeling of wearing pyjamas and provide a little relief from our high definition obsession.” From detailed bubble faces to spaghetti-like creatures, the imagination and variety of the gifs is what drew us in. “Every idea I have always comes from the gut. I never sketch or plan, I just sit down and start animating frame by frame,” Ori says. “I used to always try to make things that cheer me up, but the most recent work is almost the opposite. It’s an insight into my inner world while fighting depression.”

The slightly darker undertones to Ori’s work are emulated by the shadowy colour palette of changeable purples and blues. It used to take the animator a week to do one loop but now he can make one in a day, and this speed seems to correlate with his enjoyment of the looping process.

For Ori, it’s the ability to create movement and gesture that excites him, and something that always comes before the illustration itself. “I start by animating a shape, then I add another shape and another until a character is born. I enjoy the feeling of crafting inertia and weight one frame at a time – it feels like magic. The freedom of it is somewhere between modern dance and puppetry.”