Press Release
Once Upon a Rabbit Animated Short by Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun Receives the Bronze A' Design Award in Movie, Video and Animation Design
Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun recognized for movie, video and animation design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 22, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Once Upon a Rabbit Animated Short by Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun has been granted the Bronze A' Design Award in the Movie, Video and Animation Design category. The award was conferred within the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Bronze A' Design Award Explained
The Bronze A' Design Award is given to outstanding designs that showcase a high degree of creativity and practicality. It recognizes the dedication and skill of designers who produce work that stands out for its thoughtful development and innovative use of materials and technology. These designs are acknowledged for their professional execution and potential to influence industry standards positively. Winning this award highlights the designer's ability to blend form and function effectively, offering solutions that enhance people's lives and wellbeing.
Regarding Once Upon a Rabbit Animated Short
Once Upon a Rabbit is an animated design project inspired by cultural details of the Lantern Festival and childhood visual memory. The work establishes a soft, expressive visual language through a hybrid of dimensional form and hand drawn sensibility, creating imagery that feels both structured and playful. Recurring motifs such as the rabbit and Tangyuan, rice balls, are used as visual anchors, while motion, rhythm, and composition emphasize atmosphere and continuity, resulting in a cohesive design experience rooted in warmth, familiarity, and cultural resonance.
About Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun
Hannah Sun and Jesseter Wang are multidisciplinary motion designers and animators working across branding, advertising, and digital experiences. Based in New York, their practice combines graphic design, animation, and visual storytelling to create motion systems and narrative-driven visuals for global brands and cultural projects. Their work explores the relationship between design, movement, and technology, with a focus on clarity, emotion, and human-centered experiences. Their projects have been recognized through international design platforms and publications, and span commercial campaigns, interactive experiences, and short-form animated works.
Award Record
Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun is a winner of 1 A' Design Award, including this recognition.
About the A' Movie, Video and Animation Design Award
The A' Movie Design Award is an international movie design competition recognizing outstanding movie designs by best movie designers and directors worldwide. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to movie designers, animation artists, directors and film producers from all countries. Entries typically include feature films, short films, documentaries, animations, music videos and experimental films. Awarded movie designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/movie
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/180467
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/180467
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!180467
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/378562
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Once Upon a Rabbit Animated Short
- Function
- Animated Short
- Category
- Movie, Video and Animation Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Entertainment and Arts
- Colors
- Firebrick, Chocolate, Goldenrod, Light Gray and Sienna
- Images
- 4
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Jesseter Wang and Hannah Sun
- Country
- United States of America
- Recognition
- Bronze A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #180467
Credits
- Team
- Jesseter Wang, and Hannah Sun
- Image Credits
- Direction / Design / Animation: [Jesseter Wang & Hannah Sun] Music / Sound: [Davis Aguirre]
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Once Upon a Rabbit is an animated short inspired by childhood memories and subtle cultural details of the Lantern Festival. Guided by the recurring presence of the rabbit and tangyuan (rice balls), the film unfolds as a sequence of connected moments that gradually lead toward a shared table. The piece emphasizes emotional flow and visual association over explicit storytelling, capturing the lively warmth of the Lantern Festival.
- Inspiration
- Once Upon a Rabbit was inspired by childhood memories and subtle cultural details of the Lantern Festival. The project explores the use of 3D techniques rendered with a 2D sensibility, creating a vivid yet dreamlike visual language reminiscent of childhood doodles. By prioritizing mood, memory, and shared cultural experience over literal representation, the work aims to evoke a sense of warmth and nostalgia through motion.
- Research
- This project is based on exploratory design research focused on visual expression and cultural memory. The objective was to understand how abstract form, color, and motion could evoke familiarity associated with the Lantern Festival without relying on literal depiction. The research was conducted through visual experimentation, reference studies, and iterative sketching using digital tools. Observations were drawn from personal memory, cultural imagery, and repeated motion tests.
- Challenge
- A key creative challenge was achieving a sense of warmth and human touch within a digitally constructed visual environment. The project sought to avoid a rigid or overly polished appearance by introducing texture, softness, and brush-like qualities into form and motion. Balancing control and imperfection required careful visual restraint, ensuring the imagery remained expressive and inviting while maintaining coherence and clarity throughout the animation.
- Realization and Technology
- The project was produced using a hybrid 3D and 2D animation workflow. Core scenes and motion were created in Cinema 4D, with a focus on modeling and animation. The renders were then composited in Adobe After Effects, where textures, graphic details, and subtle motion accents were added to achieve a cohesive, handcrafted visual quality.
- Operation and Interaction
- Motion unfolds through a sequence of gentle transformations, where shapes, colors, and motifs transition fluidly between scenes. Visual elements expand, contract, and reorganize to guide attention and create continuity, allowing the design to feel cohesive while maintaining a sense of lightness and rhythm throughout the experience.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project was developed and completed in 2023 as an independent animation project, produced remotely.
- Keywords
- Animation, Motion Design, Illustration, Culture, Year of Rabbit
