Move Your Feet

About

"Move Your Feet" is a 2003 pop song by the Danish duo Junior Senior that became most well-known for its pixel art-influenced music video on the web. Since its YouTube upload in early 2008, the music video has inspired a series of handcut GIF animations on Something Awful, DeviantART and elsewhere online.

Origin

The pixel art for the "Move Your Feet" music video^[1] was originally drawn by art collective Shynola^[2] using its signature style of low-resolution pixel art with the bitmap graphics editor Deluxe Paint.^[3] The song was recorded sometime in 2002 and the earliest known instance of the music video available for download was featured in a blog article^[4] posted on August 5th, 2002.

Upon its commercial release in 2003, the song became Junior Senior's biggest hit, reaching #3 in the United Kingdom and #20 in Australia, and played at dance clubs all over the world. The song was also featured in numerous promotional clips for various TV programs, such as the Australian version of "So You Think You Can Dance," as well as comedy films like White Chicks and Forgetting Sarah Marshall among others. The game was also incorporated into the dance arcade games Dance Dance Revolution and Phineas and Ferb.

Spread

In 2003, the QuickTime movie version of the music video quickly spread through other internet humor forums like Ebaumsworld and Albino Blacksheep; However, many of the early copies were removed due to copyright infringement. In April 2004, The Metal Box^[6] released three Flash-based mini games based on various segments from the original music video. On March 31st, 2005, the first YTMND^[5] version of "Move Your Feet" was uploaded with the GIF animation of a bread jumping up an down from a toaster. Numerous duplicate sites based on the same GIF soon followed.

On March 25th, 2006, YouTuber Sundaysworstenemy uploaded the original music video, rekindling online interest in the song. On January 3rd, 2008, a game version of the music video uploaded onto Newgrounds.^[7] On March 7th that year, the same game was reuploaded onto DeviantART.

But the GIF-making fad didn't begin until July 21st, 2008, when SomethingAwful user Squirrels2Nuts started a discussion thread dedicated to "Move Your Feet" animations. Titled "move your feet.gif," the thread went on to spawn several dozens of animated GIFs on Something Awful as well as on DeviantART.

Notable Examples

The artworks became widely adopted as personal avatars and profile page decorations; the dancing robot GIF became one of the most recognizable instances to this date.

Notable Videos

Search Interest

External References