By your Side. Seasons of Kisses.
Together
Their love story began unexpectedly, like cherry blossoms blooming in the depths of winter. As their feelings took root among the pink flurry, their bond mirrored the spring’s vibrancy and promise. As time evolved, so did their relationship, metamorphosing into a radiant, unyielding summer love. The shedding petals were replaced by a deep-rooted trust and respect, their passion burning intensely as the midday sun.
As the years turned them wiser, their shared history was reflected in the golden hues of autumn. The fiery passion of summer had mellowed into a warm, comfortable glow. The understanding they shared was as deep as the autumnal earth, their connection more profound than the deepest roots. Now in their winter years, they cast fond, reminiscent looks back at their journey, the memory of their first meeting under the cherry blossoms vivid as ever. Their enduring love story was as beautiful and resilient as those cherry blossoms blooming defiantly in the heart of winter.
Video
Square Format (1:1)
The video is intended to be viewed in square format.
Vertical Format (9:16)
The vertical format was edited and cropped for Instagram reel.
Concept
To explain a little bit about what I tried to do — I started the video with two men in their 20s, walking on the street under cherry blossoms, in an afternoon in Spring. For every 300 frames (at 15fps, that’s every 20 seconds), I switched the seasons — from Spring to Summer, Autumn, and Winter. I also aged the men by 10 years every 300 frames, eventually ending at 50 years old at frame 900. But the renders appear to have a hard time picking up the years, even with keywords “old” and “mature”. A small blimp of white beard can be seen briefly at the end.
The core idea behind this animation is to show a couple meeting in their 20s, living by each other, then growing old together. The seasons are metaphors of the years. Then at the end of the video, the couple remembers about their past when they first met, and it switched back into their 20s, about that memorable afternoon when cherry blossoms falls and they met for the first time.
This is my first experiment with Deforum. It takes 1.5 hours to render 1200 frames on an RTX 4090. I will be experimenting a lot more.
Correction: I had previously said that it took 4 hours to render 1200 frames, but I forgot that I was trying to render some SDXL images at 1024x, which is effectively 4x the pixels. I’m currently rendering some regular renders at 512x with DPM++ SDE Karras at 25 steps and it’s taking approximately 1 hour for the job.
Tech
Rendered with Stable Diffusion and Deforum, with Airfuck’s Wild Mix.
Text prompts in Stable Diffusion, Deforum, 1200 frames, 15fps, 80 secs (1 min 20 sec).
- Airfuck’s Wild Mix, Euler a, 40 steps
- 512x512
- Deforum key prompts at frame 0, 300, 600, 900, 1200
- Soundtrack: Licensed soundtrack “By You Side” by Justin Lee. Remixed in Ableton Live Suite
- Animation: Adobe After Effects
- Stills, Post: Topaz Gigapixel HQ 4x
- Stills, Post: Adobe Lightroom color adjustments
Two video versions available
- Square (1:1). Original edition.
- 2160x2160, 4K, private collection.
- 1080x1080, HD, YouTube, Twitter.
- Vertical (9:16). Special edit for Instagram Reel. 1080x1920
