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 19, 2010, when DeviantArt user Baka Michi posted a basic image base to create more lick icons with:
Precedent: Myuri
Lick Icons were most likely inspired by the earlier “Cat Licking screen” phenomena popular in 2006, when the following picture was uploaded to DeviantArt by GlassWind on February 19, 2006.
The character’s name is Myuri, and was widely circulated in forums and chatrooms. It is not actually a cat per se, but one of GlassWind’s earlier characters:
Although it has some derivatives (usually changes in the coloring of the avatar), it has not seen the same amount of variation as the fad started by Baka Michi.
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:
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. Recolors and edited versions of the Myuri lick are often seen on the easy game scripting engine, Scratch, and other game forums.
