For this work I was tasked to make a storybook of whatever I could think of, the only rule was that it had to conform to the page layout of the book I chose for the image. With that in mind i was thinking of the duality of life and how often time children read about nature and the theory that the world is one big tortes or turtle, so with that I made this reflection on life and how things can evolve to accommodate their environment.

For this I used clipping masks, creating manual drop shadows, creating a light source, and making the environments fit the respective creature by using blurs and shaders to give depth and distance. The main thing i was trying to convey with the background elements was depth, which is why the coral on the left is below the book (waters) surface and the trees on the right are upright and have shadows.