[UPDATE] Jessica’s “Cherry Blossoms” was awarded “Best in Class” by her peers and also won “First Place” in The ACME Network’s Advanced Storytelling competition!  Way to go, Jessica!

In a recent animation project we did in Digital Animation, we took a haiku (either one that already exists or one we came up with on our own) and animated it based on its lines.

This was my haiku, which I came up with myself:

“Cherry Blossoms”

Cherry blossoms, pink
Like the soft blush on one’s face
Flow in the cool breeze.

Inspiration came from the fact that most Japanese Haikus are traditionally about nature, hence my focus on cherry blossoms. That, and I find cherry blossoms absolutely gorgeous to look at, especially when the petals flow in the wind. I don’t think I did them much justice, though, but they’re still lovely.

If you could believe it, some of inspiration also came from me listening to “Stickerbrush Symphony” way too much while I was animating this. In fact, as I type I am listening to this on a loop. What can I say, I just love that track from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. It’s very soothing and beautiful, for a music track from a Super Nintendo game. Gotta admire the power of the Super Nintendo!

Anyway, this is probably one of my better animations, as I’m finally getting the hang of messing around with Color Transform effects and messing around with the Camera (well, that last one I’m still having issues. Those darn cameras…). The wind was tricky to animate, though, but I think I got the hang of it towards the end.

The music was put together in Garage Band. Animation done in Toon Boom Studio 4.5.