Andreas Samuelsson returns with more brilliant emojis, and this time they're animated

Following the runaway success of his last collection of emojis – 100 to be exact, designed for occasions you might need to use a cafetière, an olive, some sex toys and a pencil sharpening in a DM – Andreas Samuelsson has launched his latest selection. Not content with merely launching a new set of illustrations, Andreas Samuelsson and publisher Nieves have taken this range a step further, collaborating with Wim Dijksterhuis to animate the emojis.

On first glance, a small meat grinder, breathing lungs, a tooting trumpet, and a stepping boot (my guess, Timberland) are some of the new additions among the 40+ emojis. Not all the emojis move in the way you might expect; the iris of a blinking eye spins as if it’s a symbol on a slot machine, for example.

On what inspired Andreas to create the new set, the illustrator tells It’s Nice That: “I want to capture the meeting between the simplest form and the emotions in a movement. A raindrop moving on the inside of a car window. How a ball bounces and stops. Sea and wind. A collection of fragments from life.”

Andreas’ unique views on emojis also provide food for thought on the tech-based interactions of today. “It can feel demanding or perceived as wrong to choose an emoji today. With the right tone, humour, emotions and memories, this could become more disarming over time. [Emojis] could lead to a calmer form of dialogue between people where the image can speak for itself.”

The newly animated emojis are available for download as stickers. Like the rest of us at It’s Nice That, Andreas has his favourites: “I like the boat very much. It really conveys the basic feeling in this project. It shows an emoji is still a very new way of communicating and that small movements at the right pace can make one feel very much. The eye is also very interesting where the shape oscillates between a normal eye and a screen. An aesthetic game but at the same time a meeting between man and machine. Exactly where we stand today, on the border of the future.”