From Poem to Animation: Jess and Wiggle

Once there was a little girlWith the cutest reddish curlHer name--how could you guess?It was simply--Jess

So started a poem I wrote for a little girl named Jess, who at two months was looking at the world with such an intense, serious observation, as if to examine if anything was worthy of a smile. Once the ink dried on paper, each verse started forming shapes in my mind. So here is the title page:


You can see that from the start, the word 'Jess' became her face, and also that it bore an expression, sad at the beginning, happy by the end. Likewise, the word Wiggle was drawn, literally with a wave in it, one 'g' rolling around the other. Other words soon followed, becoming pictorial elements that express their meaning (see the word 'not' (forming a stop sign) and 'you' (pointing at you) in the image below.

Then, once the entire book was ready, I used the illustrations to create an animation, which Jess loves to hear to this day.