Lotte Reiniger

The videos above show the work of Lotte Reiniger, the first is an example of her work, the second showing how she actually made her animations. She is an animator who worked with shadow puppet animation, focusing on stories such as fair tales or folk-lore. She used pins in black card to move limbs, her narrative was told through the movements of characters. The designs also held a big part in her work each character needs to be distinct and match their role in the story, with little detail because of the materials used. To crate her animations she cut out charters and background details from black card. Each character would be cut into different pieces, separating limbs, such as arms be cut away from the body and then she would pierce a pin through the arm and body where they would join which allows for movement, she would do this with every limb. She puts together the the scene on to a light box, and then adds characters into it slowly moving them bit by bit and taking a picture for each frame. In the Hansel and Gretel story, as seen above, there are characters such as the children (Hansel & Gretel) as well as the witch as well as animals such as a squirrel. The scenery is of a forrest and a house, the witches house and cages. The images se has used are her interpretation of the fairytale Hansel and Gretel. The typography in the animation is used to introduce the story and credit the the work, animating and design as well as voices and music within the animation. She would have made these animations to entertain an audience. Because of the style of the animation the shots are limited, only using a side view of the scene, this is because of the limitations with this technique, using a variety of shots with different angles could wreck the narrative and confuse the viewer. I have experimented with shadow puppet animation, i made my characters quite simple in comparison to Lotte but have tried to make my characters distinctive. I used the same techniques she has to create the animation, I decided on a fairly simple story, Instead of using a light box I just placed my components together and moving characters slowly taking pictures with a camera for each frame.