sidenote

In this animation was created using LuaTeX, TikZ, and the glyph “a” from the Linux Libertine font.

The process which this animation resulted in was the following:

1. Converted the font to SVG to use the path of the glyph.
2. Split the path into the inner and outer outlines.
3. Draw the two separate lines with (different) dashed patterns.
4. Set increasing offset for the dashed patterns for each frame.
5. Rasterize and create GIF using GIMP.

Sorry, no source code this time.