From April 2023 to July 2023, I was at Young Animators Club doing animations for use in a film named The Pigeon Theory, as part of an exhibition named Big Folkestone Doodle. Written, animated, narrated and scored by the other young animators and myself and edited by Lydia Hibbert, the film is about the pigeons’ takeover of the world and has interviews with different people in Folkestone giving their thoughts and theories about them based on their actions. It was made using Adobe After Effects, Character Animator, Premiere Pro, Google Maps and Procreate. I made a pigeon puppet for a stop motion scene in which a flock of pigeons (the other young animators’ pigeons) fight over breadcrumbs and have a party, and did three hand-drawn animations: one of a squirrel running and jumping across some Folkestone buildings’ walls and windows to reach an acorn (named Squirrel Climber made using markers, a plastic sheet and a photograph), another of a pie on a window sill growing legs and standing up, and one of a rotoscoped pigeon looking back before turning into a seagull and flying towards the screen, eating the camera. All three animations were photographed in Procreate, which I also used to do an animated advertisement for the exhibition itself.

On 22 July 2023, the exhibition opened at 4pm, and I attended it at 3:30pm. There I watched the film and saw my animations, though the one with the squirrel did not play due to the interview featuring it being shortened before the squirrel could move. The film was later uploaded to YouTube under the name The Pigeon Problem. My pigeon is seen at 3:45, and my animations are at 6:07, 9:17 and 10:42.