Can I make only the design in a tilemap move?

I am not sure if this is even possible, but wanted to ask if anyone knows. Let's say I have a simple design on my tilemap. I want to animate the design to move from left to right. Is it possible to tell the tilemap to move the sprite used in the tilemap in a loop style from left to right, or is the only option to recreate new tilemaps at the end of the previous tilemap?

As far as I know, a tilemap is a tilemap. However, you can 'con the system' by creating a sprite on top of the tilemap, removing the original, and animating it towards the position you want the tile to move to, then when it finishes update that tile in the tilemap and kill the sprite. So it will look the same, pretty much.

paulscottrobson, thanks but that would be actually defeating the purpose of using tilemap. I am building for a mobile game, so I am trying to be as conservative as possible. Constantly creating lots of sprites will take its toll on any mobile device. I have already created a system where I animate a large tilemap, and constantly create a new one once it almost runs out of space. It is much more effective this way than using sprites, but would still like to know if there was a way to actually tell the tilemap to "move" the sprite design used for the tilemap in a loop style.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "move the sprite design used for the tilemap in a loop style". AFAICS the tilemap operates like the old memory mapped displays of early home computers, it's an x by y grid, every element is the same size, and each element has 1 tile (or nothing).

paulscottrobson, sorry I guess I really didn't explain that too well. I was wondering if it is possible for me to keep the tilemap at a certain size, but have what is being displayed in the tilemap, animated to make it appear like it is moving from left to right. In other words, the tilemap will continuously loop what is being displayed, while maintaining its size. Almost like a tv screen showing moving images.

I am guessing that this is not possible.