Another approach is to place HTML elements on top of three.js canvas. In my example I move DIV element around, to achieve tooltip effect. Same way you can place any number of transparent divs with animated gif in it.
Working tooltop to try: http://jsfiddle.net/mmalex/ycnh0wze/
Explanation you can find here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54438811/8742287
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Another demonstration of mixing HTML elements with 3D scene is dimension labels