Pigeon Fest, East Berlin — Amy Guion Clay

One of the great things about artist residencies is the people - both the locals and the fellow artists. I had this idea before I came to Berlin to try a hand painted animation. Luckily, my artist friends were young and tech savvy, so were hugely helpful and figuring out how to do an animation. Even though I hand painted each frame, I had to figure out how to turn them into a mini short film loop.

The other challenge was that I needed to start with a video of birds taking flight. I found a few pigeons in Alexanderplatz, one of the city squares where pigeons flock. I was self conscious while feeding the pigeons, then shooing them away with one hand and videoing with my digital camera in the other hand. Crude at best.

So now I’m breaking down the video into stills, drawing and painting every 8th still or so, taking photos of the paintings and then attempting to stitch them together again in some way, with sound, etc. This is a whole new world for me, and extremely slow going. And without the right (and often expensive) tools, simple things become laborious.