Do Cherries Grow in Space?

"Earning" & "deserving" do not exist.

The first thing I did when I began to write the story that would become Do Cherries Grow in Space? was essentially write a thesis statement/ question: Earning and deserving don't exit, do they? Do we truly live in a world of meritocracy or do people just choose to give whatever they want to whomever they choose? I wanted to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Do Cherries Grow in Space? was my graduate school thesis project. I started writing it during the summer break in 2023 after one of my professors suggested I write a comic after seeing my work on How to Change the World and my game about going to the moon. I consider this film the culmination of my art and ideation from Fall 2019 to Spring 2024. Around the same time as the suggestion from my professor, an elder filmmaker gave me the advice to "Write whatever you bitch about." From then it was clear what I had to do.

Summer 2023

Notes app

The short version

After I started writing some plot points and coming up with a general story outline, I drew some different sketches to figure out what the main character would look like. Below are some of the things I drew in the process of narrowing down Hudson's look. You can read more about how the character came to be here.

Designing the main character

When the fall came around, I hadn't made a finished comic, but I decided to make it my thesis project. I drafted several different short stories and storyboards that I'd potentially flesh out into a larger version of the narrative. This eventually became my first draft of the comic, at the time titled Confluency which you can read here.

By the winter I had decided that I would actually make an animated film rather than a comic and continued to work on locking down the story that I wanted to tell, setting up a production plan and pipeline, and making as much progress toward the animation as I could before going back to school. Below are some storyboards that I made during that time, taking a similar short story approach like I had previously with the writing. I made the short animation, With the Moon, to work out the steps in the animation process I'd use going forward.

I finished a 5-minute animatic by the end of that time. I ended up changing the story for the final fim but this was a big step in the process. After this I went on to create all the assets and put together the film seen at the top of the page.

I submitted the film for several festivals and also never stopped talking about it which got me the opportunity to screen it at the events listed here.

Thank you for showing my film

ASIFA East Animation Weekend 2024

Looking back, I think maybe the reason I started this project in the first place was to show myself that earing and deserving really don't exist. Many people feel as though they have to earn the right to simply be the person that they want to be and to do the things they want to do., thinking like- "If I was good enough then I would already have it." I have however, since the making of this project seen that so many people think so highly of me and the things that I do and that I'm more capable than many people who do have the things that I want, that there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to live my ideal life.

Some people may treat you like a nuisance for pursuing your goals and some might outright tell you that your objectives are wrong but just because everybody doesn't agree with you doesn't make you the bad guy. I think now, that our job is simply find the ones who support us and our ends. So yeah, don't let anyone tell you that you haven't earned or you don't deserve. Whoever you want to be, there's someplace out there for that.

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Get in touch at blckmgx@gmail.com

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