Zodiac calendar 2012 May-Jun

One of my favorite assignments this year was to make a calendar showing the "passing of time". I chose to take a leaf from oriental mythology and depict the race which decided the order of the Chinese Zodiac. (The front page depicting the cat who slept through it all)

For those who don't know it, the myth can be summarized as such:

-The Rat took a ride on the horns of the generous Ox, before jumping forward right at the end.

-The Tiger would've done better, had he had an easier time swimming through the river. The Rabbit took a ride on a log across the river, unknowingly with some help from the Dragon who blew the log forward.

-The Snake took a ride on the Horse's leg, scaring it at the end when it jumped off.

-The Sheep, Monkey & Rooster worked together to build a raft to help them all cross the river.

-The dog would have done better... had it not had so much fun playing in the river.

-Finally, the Pig had taken a nap, and so was lagging behind as the race drew to a close.

That said, the calendar dates have been arranged (according to the calendar of Victoria, Australia) as such: Dark red days are public holidays, red days are either school holidays (for me) or Sundays. Saturdays are blue (so long as they are not also holidays), and the 13 days with yellow numbers are full moons. Lastly of course are the brown days, which aren't really special in any way.

Oh, and two final points: the animals were made out of paper and photographed, and the file of these images before I split them and turned them into png files was a ~830MB .ai file.