About

Lick icons are GIF-animated avatars featuring various characters drawn to appear as if they're licking the viewer's face. Since becoming quite popular through DeviantART community in early 2010, the icon-drawing trend quickly spawned hundreds to thousands of customized "licking" avatars based on popular cartoon characters.

Origin

This icon-drawing fad began on February 19th, 2010, when DeviantArt user BakaMichi^[1] posted a basic image base to create more lick icons with:

Precedent: Myuri

Lick icons were inspired by the previous "cat licking screen" GIF character "Myuri" that became used as profile avatars in the forums and chatrooms. The first instance was uploaded by DeviantArt user Glasswind^[2] on February 19th, 2006.

Spread

The usage of the icons on DeviantArt started spreading around in numbers, most of the characters drawn of the base being either Pokemon, Fursonas or other popular cartoon creatures. DeviantART group for Lick Icons was created on July 24th, 2010. The lick icons have managed to find it's way onto other sites such as Gaia.

Recolored and edited versions of the Myuri icons are often seen on the easy game scripting engine Scratch, and other game forums.

Notable Examples

How To Make Your Own

Creating an animated GIF avatar typically requires some sort of image-editing software like Photoshop or GIMP. To learn more about making GIF-animated avatars, please refer to this manual put together by GrowlitheArtistGirl or check out the video instructions below:

External References

^[1] DeviantART – Baka Michi

^[2] DeviantART – GlassWind

^[3] DeviantART – Lick Avvies Group

^[4] Gaia Online – User Profile