Description
For “City Pigeon” I aimed to find a playful way to depict environmental stress. Stress and play don’t seem like things that go together, yet our culture often expects us to put on such a persona of cheerfulness despite the environmental stressors weighing us down. The pigeon in my animation tries to escape the chaos of the city, but gets lost and runs into caution tape. When he finally seems safe, he is suddenly buried by aluminum cans, having failed to escape the growing chaos around him.
Creative Process
My idea for this animation came as I was doodling in my chemistry class. I began with ducks, inspired by the shape of cyclic voltammetry graphs, but later switched to a pigeon which was better suited to the city environment.
Next I created a storyboard for my animation. The storyboard is much more complex than the final animation ended up being. This is because of limitations on time and my own skills in After Effects. I also ended up liking the simplified look of my final product, because it helps keep the focus on the pigeon rather than everything going on in the background.
For the city buildings, I chose to model them after real buildings in my hometown of Durham, NC. This building, for example, is a simplified drawing of a building known locally as The Pickle. I used images of concrete texture from around Davidson College to fill in the buildings and provide texture for the ground.
I drew all of the animation components in Adobe Illustrator. Then I imported them into photoshop to create a png or a gif, which I then imported into After Effects.
For the animation’s color palate, I liked the vibrant orange, teal, and green color scheme in a pigeon’s feet and feathers, so I decided to mimic this in the building colors.
Annotated Bibliography
Moore, Tomm, and Nora Twomey, dir. The Secret of Kells. Cartoon Saloon, 2010.
- I really like the style of the forest scenes in this movie, and it inspired the vines I drew for the ending of my animation.
Persichetti, Bob, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, dir. Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation, 2018.
- This is my favorite animated film, and I love the way it captures the comic book style in its animation by mimicking offset printing misregistration in scene backgrounds. I tried to create my own spin on this with the layered buildings that vibrate and eventually break apart in my animation’s background.
Discover Durham, University Tower, 2020, photograph, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Tower_%28Durham,_North_Carolina%29.
- I used this image of University Tower, also known as The Pickle, to create an outline for one of the purple towers in my animation.
Atlpedia, One City Center, 2019, photograph, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_City_Center_%28Durham%29.
- This building located in downtown Durham was the model for one of the teal-colored towers.
TnBailey09, Durham Centre, 2015, photograph, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_Centre_%28Durham,_North_Carolina%29.
- The Durham Centre is another building I included in my animation because I’ve always liked it’s unique shape.
