Inspiration in windmills

I found a couple of pictures of some silhouetted windmills on Google and they rather strongly reminded me of Lotte Reiniger's work — the striking contrast of a pitch black shape against a simple backdrop. It would be quite interesting to do all the background elements in this style, with the backdrops themselves in very soft focus with just a few colours but all large objects and set pieces silhouetted.

I'd like to with incorporating the idea of colour and silhouettes into the animation itself. I'm not entirely sure how yet — perhaps having the character interacting with the environment in some way and manipulating colours and shadows?

Lotte Reiniger

Craig mentioned Lotte Reiniger as one of his favourite animators (aside from Disney) so I've been having a look at some of her work. She was a silhouette animator and did a massive array of fairytale adaptions, which I thought was relevant!

I really love the title cards — it reminds me of Watch With Mother! Very simple and effective. This might be something I can use?

Looking mainly at the way the backgrounds contrast with the characters — again, very simple cutout shapes similar to the works of Alice & Martin Provensen and Lewitt-Him. The solid black figures against the relatively soft background is extremely striking.


If I were to go ahead with the pop up book idea, the way Lotte Reiniger animated her puppets could be something to bear in mind. In actual pop up books the character puppets are very limited in movement, often with just one or two articulated limbs — a waving arm for example — so I could make several puppets for each necessary action/expression and just flip between them?

Alice & Martin Provensen

Found myself a bit of a dynamic duo whilst looking through one of the books I got from the library — Alice & Martin Provensen, a huband-wife team that illustrated children's books in the mid-'40s. Martin also designed Tony the tiger!

Image source

Image source

Image source

I love the contrast created between the detailed scenery and the colourful cutout characters. The bold and simplistic shapes against relatively detailed backdrops really brings the character into focus.

Initial project thoughts — Digital Animation

In response to some of the things Craig told me, I went straight to the library and got a load of books on fairytale/children's book illustrators. He mentioned that he favours Disney films and children's fairytales (notably Beauty & the Beast and Peter Pan) so I've started by looking mainly at classic illustrations from those particular stories.

Craig initially struck me as a very warm-hearted person with strong connections to his childhood, so I'd like to try to represent that by somehow combining the charm and appeal of Disney's popular renditions of fairytale characters with the sentimentality and intricacy of classic fairytale illustrations.

One of the things I love about these old illustrations is the attention to detail. The very soft watercolors and delicate lines would make excellent stop-motion puppets if I was able to faithfully replicate the style (perhaps using modified photographs?)

I've put together a very quick 'influence map' in my sketchbook of just a few images that caught my attention to give me a visual starting point (and something to refer back to in case I get stuck).