Britannica Sources used in this answer

How does silhouette animation use flat jointed marionettes?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Animated scene from The Wild Robot showing a round-eyed robot with a fox perched on its shoulder in a forest clearing. — Animation Scene from the 2024 science fiction animated film *The Wild Robot*, directed by Chris Sanders.

In silhouette animation, a technique notably developed by Lotte Reiniger in the 1920s, flat-figure marionettes are used to create movement through a frame-by-frame process.1

These marionettes are constructed with joints, allowing their limbs and bodies to be manipulated. To simulate motion, the animator minutely readjusts the poses of these jointed figures between each photographic exposure. By capturing these incremental changes in a sequence, the figures appear to move fluidly when the film is played back. This method relies on the principles of silhouette art, where the focus is on the sharp outline and shadow of the figures against a background.12