I made this animation to announce that I was moving back to NY after having lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade. I used all my favorite tools for this piece, watercolor brushes in Photoshop and final animation in After Effects. A real joyful passion project about a very exciting cross country move for me and my dog Ted. 

Pictured below is one of my first loose idea sketches, and an illustration from the development of the background style. I explored a lot of different approaches to the Oregon landscape illustration for this animation. I knew I wanted it to be a forest and to communicate a bit of the beauty but also dreariness of the Pacific Northwest. I came close to using the ferny forest background seen below but ultimately wasn't satisfied with the color palette and it felt too serious. In the end, I went with the swoopy and repetitive trees in the final animation because their cute blandness made me laugh. To me, the homogenous trees were a funny metaphor for the homogeneity of the people in Portland.