Free Materials Sites - An exhibition
Featured Sites
Before you start browsing the list of featured sites, keep in mind that this is just a fraction of the free materials sites that used to exist. The majority of pages has been taken down either by users themselves or by webhosting services like Geocities and the likes shutting down. The remaining websites exist either because of sheer luck, the creator's dedication to preserve their work online or existing copies on the Internet Archive. Among these sites I've made a selection of pages that I personally thought stood out aesthetically or if the users materials made a significant impact in the early days of the internet.
Sweet Room
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Hisayo Tada's sweet room is one of the prettiest materials sites that I came across. The quality of her works is sublime, with an amazing eye for detail. Sweet Room specializes in all things European, featuring Christmas and Easter pages, but also gifs related to Italian, French and English cultural icons. Hisayo Tada's style can be described as cozy and her gifs would make any personal site feel like a place to call home. She seems to have a passion for food and cooking, but there are also two pages full of designer handbag gifs to be found. One such page was made at the request of her friend Naho. Sweet Room has fortunately been preserved very well on the Internet Archive and her page was a big inspiration for me to start investigating the free materials scene.
Featured Works
Lines
Backgrounds
SKY's Animations
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SKY a.k.a. Ryo-san has been a very influential and prolific creator of animated gifs. His website, which is still online today, contains thousands of homemade gifs. His specialisation is making animated gifs of moving animals, vegetables, fruits and other objects. There are also big sections depicting people doing all kinds of daily activities as well as seasonal and holiday related gifs. I found his works decorated on lots of Geocities websites, especialy the animated fruits and veggies seem to have been a big hit. What is impressive is how Ryo-san has a distinct style that is visible throughout his thousands of creations. His site has remained active into the 2010's and also features smartphone related materials.
Featured Works
School Icons Club
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Makorin from Okayama in Japan was the owner and creator of School Icon's Club. A materials website specializing in school related icons, gifs, buttons, lines and many other web materials. The site has been well preserved on the Internet Archive and I think one of the reasons that this site got a decent amount of exposure is that the page is available in English. Makorin's animation style can be described as simple and functional, but cheerful as well.
Featured Works
Lines
Backgrounds
A pixel art self portrait of webmaster Makorin.
Yashan's Web Graphics
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Yashan's web materials page has made a relatively big impact with a limited amount of content. Her graphics have been widely adopted on personal websites. Her page has been featured on the Mining Company as "web clipart site of the month" once, which may explain part of why her material became popular in the west. I really like Yashan's animation style. The 'small babies' gifs display her great sense of timing, which makes her gifs feel very much alive. Yashan reveals little about her identity except that she lived in Tokyo around the turn of the century and she had a cat called Goro whom she used as a model for her cat gifs. The site seems to have gone offline after 2001.
Featured Works
Free Bird
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Free Bird's aptly named website features lot of web materials related to birds. The site began in 2002 as a sub-site of a bird appreciation society, but due to it's success became an independent website in 2003. Although the site features animated gifs in other categories as well, the main attraction are certainly all the wonderful bird images. I also like the sense of humour of the creator that is found in different scenes. There are interesting facts written about each species of bird and the creators love for birds can be felt throughout the website. The site was a relative latecomer on the free materials scene. It seems to have been updated until 2016 and is still online today. Not much is revealed about the creator of the materials and I'm not even sure if there is only one creator or several as the animation styles tend to vary on this site.
Featured Works
Backgrounds
