Lately i've seen a lot of iOS apps animating elements on 'drag'. The most universal example that I can think of which a lot of users would have access to would be Facebook on iOS (haven't tested Android).
On your news feed, do the usual drag down to refresh your feed. You'll see that if you drag your news feed down slowly, the loading gif is created as you drag, based on the position of the drag.
Does anybody know of any libraries that achieve such effects smoothly in JS?