The Dancing Baby

1996

Ron Lussier's animated GIF of Baby Cha-Cha, ripped from the Kinetix sample file and emailed into the first mass viral loop. Place: Kinetix Character Studio demo plug-in, 3D Studio Max Figures: Michael Girard and Robert Lurye, creators of the Biped plug-in · Ron Lussier, who shared the rendered AVI · LucasArts artists who converted it to GIF Kinetix releases Character Studio, a Biped-animation plug-in for 3D Studio Max. The sample file: a baby (model: Cha-Cha-Cha Baby) doing a side-step shuffle. The file ships as an AVI inside the plug-in's example folder. Ron Lussier at LucasArts emails the AVI to friends; someone converts it to GIF; the GIF is small enough to forward without questions. By winter 1996 it is on every other web page that allows animated images. It is the first viral GIF — an image that spreads across the consumer internet faster than any prior animation could, because the GIF requires no plugin and the browser will autoplay it the moment the page renders. Video: The Character Studio sample rig, set to Hooked on a Feeling, the way it actually shipped on screensavers and chain emails before Ally McBeal caught it.