GOOGLE DOODLES: LOTTE REINIGER

Lotte Reininger

Lotte Reininger created visually stunning and fantastical films using black cardboard, scissors, and boundless imagination. Pre-dating Walt Disney by nearly a decade, Reiniger pioneered a style of animation that relied on thousands of photos of paper cut-out silhouettes arranged to tell a story. It was a painstaking process that involved moving paper characters ever so slightly and snapping a photo of each movement. She created many films over the years, including The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving feature length animation.

Nearly a century later, Reiniger continues to inspire animators and artists. On what would have been her 117th birthday, we celebrate Reiniger’s limitless creativity and pioneering spirit. 

Nowadays silhouettes are still used by many artists such as this hungarian shadow theatre group called Attraction. They create pictures with shadows of their bodies.