Speaking of artistry, they may be simple flash animations (maybe just ordinary gifs) but I really like the holiday and seasonal related logo animations Yahoo has been putting out.
For Earthday they had the Yahoo Logo turn green and when you put your cursor across the logo, the O’s in Yahoo changed to recycling symbols turning around.
For Cinco de Mayo they did this cute animation of a girl dancing with mariachis. When you first loaded the page it was only one girl and the band… then she went off the screen. Then if you put your cursor over YAHOO after the initial play, the band started up and the girl brought her folklorico girlfriends to dance with the band. All of these are silent but I added music to and repeated the animation to make the Cinco de Mayo one more interesting. I’m am a native Texan and Hispanic so I see this animation and immediately think of my great uncles who used to play. It’s a bit pixelated since I did it with Movie Maker and a screen copying program but it still works out pretty good.
Keep an eye out for more animations. I am trying to copy and keep them as much as I can since I find them cute and historic.
~L~