My GIFy Valentine

Valentine’s Day is all about feelings. Sweet feelings, romantic feelings … or the kind of feelings you bury in a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Studio 360 wants you to express those feelings in the form of a GIF. It can be joyfulor sad, earnestor sardonic, addressed to your sweetheart or your barista or your Wheaton Terrier. Pretty much anything goes, as long as it’s shorter than 10 seconds and it loops.

Heben NigatuandTracy Clayton, the hosts of BuzzFeed’sAnother Round,will announce the winning GIF on Studio 360 in time for Valentine’s Day.

The contest is now closed, but you cansee all the entries here. Check our podcaston February 11th for when we announce the winner!

Heben and Tracyschooled a reluctant Kurt Andersen in one of the highest internet art forms.

Kurt Andersen: What makes a great GIF?

Heben Nigatu: A good GIF conveys something that you couldn’t otherwise express with your words online, which is a lot of things. The good ones loop, they catch a moment, or they magnify something that was otherwise uninteresting.

This challenge is meant to replace the traditional valentine with a GIF valentine. Is there anything people should keep in mind when working on their entries?

Tracy Clayton: Be original. Be creative. You need to challenge yourself a little bit. If you’re good at Photoshop and animation you can do that, if you have a camera on your phone you can make a video that way and make a GIF of it.

If some special someone was going to make a GIF valentine for you, what would you want it to be?

HN: Anything that says,”We are tiny specks of dust on this earth, but I like spending time with you, other speck of dust.” An existential valentine for me. Tracy, what kind of valentine would you want?

TC: I am partial to many things. With me you can basically never go wrong with a good penguin GIF, they’re so goofy and sometimes they fall for no reason.

HN: They’re like a walking GIF.

TC: Yes! So penguins work, also any GIFs of Jason Momoa would make my heart very happy. If you could get both those things in one GIF, I will marry you.