Cottage Dock

I created this in 2020 as a practice piece. I took the reference photo over the summer and I thought it would be a fun photo to recreate as a vector illustration.

I took the image into Adobe Illustrator and using the reference photo, I recreated it. Once I was done, I thought I would take it one step further and create an animated gif from it. I wanted to use Adobe After Effects more and this was a perfect side project for me to do that. 

I formatted the Illustrator file so the layers would appear properly in After Effects to make it easier to animate. I was able to add the movement of the water in the lake and sway the Canadian flag like it was picked up by the breeze. 

When I was happy with it, I exported the file to Adobe Photoshop where I was able to create and export the files as a gif. 

If I am to ever create something like this again or go back and make changes I would:

• Add clouds in the sky (with some animation)
• Bring down the opacity of the flag
• Make it look like the page in the book is being flipped
• Adjust the gradient of the sky or figure out why it it looked like this after exporting as a gif file
• Change the colour of the water reflections so they are more prominent