Seawall Photographer

If you can't think of what to animate, photos make great inspiration. This scene was adapted from a photograph I took on Vancouver's seawall at English Bay a few years ago—one of my favourite places in the world for a walk at sundown. Here is the source photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/asherisbrucker/26691273672/in/photolist-GEBKKE-McCz7w-JFL1YA-JQN2Ki-JJ16An-HJAq3W-N9PnFG-G9FsSw-CjGoZb-yTm5xr-vEqkJq-vGYkyu-wQ15y6-wJdQ3u-wA1T7o-vAE9dG-uDDEhE-u2UKiL-sZwNDR-sx4zow

It took a lot of tinkering to get the right look. The girl (along with her bike and the ships in the distance) was traced from the source photo in Illustrator and rigged & animated in After Effects with Duik. The ocean was created by blending a few instances of Trapcode Mir. The seawall itself was made using rotated shape layers, with fractal noise for texturing. The lighting was accomplished with a distant point light for the sun and a couple ambient lights (orange and purple) for fill. I used 3D models for the bike wheels so I could get the spinning back tire, which was done with Element 3D.

*This is a re-upload. I made a few improvements to the composition (namely reducing to 12fps and improving the look of the water). I couldn't remove the artifacts from the gif, unfortunately. :(