When I was in grad school for my other graduate degree, my mom planted rows of plants on both sides of the sidewalk that led from the front door of my house to the street where the mailbox was. They looked nice, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that the plants actually created a lot of additional work when I mowed the lawn each week because I would have to get in between each of the plants. This became really annoying after a while; and after a few months, they began to wilt and die. So one afternoon when I was mowing the lawn, I paused for a moment, looked around to see if anyone was watching me, and ran over the plants with the lawn mower. Just like that they were gone, and life became a little easier.

Perhaps designing a network id for a gardening television station absolves me from any wrongdoing with the plants I mowed down. Nonetheless, the two elements in this animation were the butterfly and the cross for the T. The butterfly was masked from a stock photograph while the cross for the T was created in illustrator. To get the butterfly’s wings to flap, I masked each wing separately and masked the torso. Then a little bit of motion blur was added to help trace the butterfly’s movement. Finally, the cross for the T was revealed using a simple mask. From there, it was just a matter of getting the coordinating timing of each animated element.