What Are the Possibilities? - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 12

and popular use in this area is “cutout” animation. This involves drawings,
photographs, and other two-dimensional objects joined together with
rivets, string, wax, or other hinging devices to simulate animated movement.
Although this leans much more in the two-dimensional world, like drawn
animation, technically speaking, it is a form of stop-motion or frame-by-
frame manipulation. The German artist Lotte Reininger created one of the
earliest examples of this form of stop motion. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
was a feature film produced in 1926 using flat opaque materials like lead
and cardboard. These forms were shaped and constructed to move on a flat
piece of glass with lighting that came from behind the cutouts. This created
a silhouette effect that was enhanced with some limited color and various
background materials to give a painterly look.
Fig 1.13 a still from Aucassin
and Nicolette, by Lotte Reiniger.
© 1975 National Film Board of
Canada.
Cutout animation was one of the most popular techniques of animation, after
drawing, for the first part of the twentieth century. It was a way to display a
fair amount of detail without having to draw that detail over and over again.
The Japanese utilized this approach through artists like Noburo Ofuji and
Kihachiro Kawamoto. Applying individual and cultural techniques and styles
to cutout animation added to the depth of this approach. Kawamoto traveled
to Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s to work with Jiri Trnka in Prague, but
Trnka encouraged him to pursue his own cultural history and create stories
and artistic applications that were relevant to Japanese culture.
Cutout animation was a fairly popular technique, practiced by animators that
worked in different mediums, including model stop-motion animation, and
traditional cel or drawn animation. Auteurs in Argentina, England, Russia,
Czechoslovakia, the United States, and other countries animated using back-
and front-lighted cutouts, cardboard, lead, translucent color papers, illustrations,
and engravings, among other materials. The films produced using cutouts