Project 5 - Silhouette Animation

Our class was introduced to the work of Lotte Reiniger, a German silhouette animator. We watched a documentary that covered some of the creation of her film 'Papageno' and contained a clip from 'The Frog Prince', from this we learned that Reiniger uses paper models and cuts out every single joint and moving part separately. We then had to go ahead and create our own short animation based on her work, using layers of glass, our own silhouette figures and top down camera work.

I initially had trouble  with thinking of a plot to animate. Eventually I decided that it would be better to decide upon characters first and let the plot spawn from them, instead of the other way round. Due to the fact that we were working with silhouettes I decided that my characters needed to have a recognisable profile, resulting in my choice to work with figures from Ancient Egypt (this was also brought on by a trip to the museum, which has a section dedicated to the Ancient World).

I am disappointed with the camera work - it is not one of my strong points. As you can see in the video, the film is slanted and shows the edges of the frame, which simply shouldn't be seen. I do quite like the lighting I used though, making use of the light to act as the sun, highlighting the god. I'm also fond of my use of secondary animation. As you can see, when Horus brings up the earth, stones and dirt come up with them. It is also evident when the human is hit in the shin by one of the pillars of earth, as the character keels over.

Overall, I'd say I was quite please with the final outcome! It is a shame about the slant, but I think the quality of the animation and the models makes up for it.