Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was a German film director in the 1920s - mainly creating films using silhouette animation. In her life she directed nearly 50 films. 

Her technique is to cut out puppets from black paper with scissors - joining together the joints using thin thread or wire, so they can be moved. Backgrounds were created by layering cut out black and white paper to create depth. She would then set up the backgrounds and puppets on top of a lightbox, with a camera positioned above - and take photos of the puppets being moved frame by frame. To transition scenes Reiniger sometimes covered it with shrinking paper shapes, as if the viewer was blinking - this makes it flow smoother. The photographs of each frame is then put together and sped up to create and animation.

I like this type of animation because although it's very flat and dark - the focus is put onto the characters and the story rather than how it looks. There is no sound other than music, so all emotion is shown through the characters. Reiniger puts a lot of detail into the puppets and backgrounds, making it a beautiful piece to look at.