Birds and Vectors.

So for my current module I have an exercise that requires us to trace an image manually, by hand. And one of the images I chose was this.

 Those are birds flying by the way, shot in New Zealand! :)

Then I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours tracing out the birds with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. For noob non-designers, the end result was like this.

I then proceeded to open up the original image in Photoshop, just to irritate myself further. And in less than 5 minutes I had pretty much the exact same result.

I even had 3 more birds. :/

Ah wells, at least now I feel like a model student for following my lecturer's instructions and not cheating with Live Trace or Photoshop. Hahaha and I feel like a pen tool expert now! Come on give me something to vectorize!

Okay anyways if anyone wants the birds in a vector format you can download it here and do whatever you want with it. (Unless your lecturer forbids you to use the birds)
Hopefully you won't have to waste 3 hours of your life like I did. :) Okay back to work.