Vogelleben | Bird life

Technique	Cut-out animation
Length	2‘44’’
by	Lukas Wind
Software	Dragonframe, DaVinci Resolve
Production	Estonian Academy of Arts
year	2025

SYNOPSiS

Lost in her daydreams and oblivious to the cuckoo egg in her nest, a bird mother is breeding her own catastrophe.

ABOUT

This work is inspired by a German childrens song that had been stuck in my head from my childhood. I looked up the song again some time ago and felt a strong urge to make a film. Then I forgot about it alltogether and it took several more years until I found an old bird book in a cute second hand store and with it came back the memory.

MAKiNG OF

Using only the cut-outs from the book I animated the singing bird mother with replacement heads from the only page that featured multiple pelican heads with open mouths:

The loops of the flying birds surprised me very much as I had no clue how they would look under the camera.

If one was to pause the film at the right moment they would realize this is infact not a bird book. Unfortunately, I had disassembled the orginal before it occured to me that I wanted to animate it. Much like when the main actor got fired from set too early. To my rescue, I found a nice green hardcover book to tape in my bird pages.