Sakura Gansha

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Inspiration

Sakura Gansha is a Romanised Japanese phrase that translates as Cherry Blossom Facial. The term “facial” is typically associated with male-dominated adult media and carries overtly sexual connotations. In this work, however, singer Siri Lee deliberately reclaims the term, reframing it as a metaphor for female pleasure, bodily autonomy, and self-directed desire. Through the nostalgic format of Japanese enka music, Lee weaves female sexuality into a poetic form, using expressive onomatopoeia to capture the subtle sounds and sensations of feminine intimacy. The result is a song that is restrained yet potent, an understated anthem of sexual liberation.

What it does

Sakura Gansha is a short-form music video experience that blends:

2D frame-by-frame animation

3D stylised modelling and lighting

AI-generated morphing textures and transitions

Live-action dance footage

and lyrical symbolism around female autonomy

All these elements were woven into a hybrid narrative that follows a feminine being blooming into self-definition.

How we built it

We used a combination of the following tools and pipelines:

Cinema 4D and Redshift for base 3D animation and render passes

ComfyUI + custom LoRA models trained on our own stylised assets for AI frame generation

Runway + Stable WarpFusion for stylised morph transitions

After Effects for compositing and FX layering

Krea + ControlNet to test alternate looks before stylisation

Audio-reactive cues were embedded to time visual beats to Siri Lee's vocals.

We treated each AI-generated element as a "draft from a subconscious machine" selecting, painting over, or rejecting them to maintain intentional authorship.

Challenges we ran into

Frame coherence: Ensuring consistency when using AI-generated sequences while avoiding flickering or artefacts.

Style matching: Getting AI to adhere to a feminine, liquid-soft aesthetic without defaulting to cyberpunk clichés.

Hardware limitations: We worked on consumer-grade GPUs and faced frequent VRAM crashes when rendering higher-res passes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a visually cohesive hybrid MV that blends AI and hand-crafted elements seamlessly.

Building a custom visual language that reflects the artist’s inner transformation without relying on spoken narrative.

Getting accepted to international festivals and winning indie recognition proof that AI-assisted storytelling can still be deeply human.

What we learned

AI is most powerful not when it replaces the artist, but when it provokes new forms of creative direction.

That true authorship lies not in generating but in curating, rejecting, re-composing.

And that even amidst technological complexity, emotion is still the final output.

What's next for Siri Lee – Sakura Gansha

We are working on:

A longer narrative cut of the MV with additional 3D symbolic elements

Submissions to festivals focused on AI art, music innovation, and female storytelling

Built With

• adobe
• comfyui
• krea
• lora
• runway