Lotte Reiniger Google Doodle honors groundbreaking animated filmmaker & her innovative style

Today’s Google doodle celebrates German animator and film director Grace Lotte Reiniger on what would have been her 117th birthday.

Reiniger is credited with creating the first full-length animated film, “The Adventures of Achmed.” She would go on to make more than 40 animated films spanning her career.

[blockquote cite = “Google Doodle Blog”]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.[/blockquote]

A precursor to stop-motion filmmaking, Reiniger’s unique style of silhouette animation involved taking photos of paper cutouts arranged and moved ever so slightly, frame by frame, to create a filmed scene.

The animated doodle was created by doodler Olivia Huynh and has been set to an original music composition by Silas Hite. According to the Google Doodle Blog, Huynh went to great lengths to create today’s doodle, building “… almost everything, from the puppets to the top-down camera rig.”

The doodle’s search icon leads to a search for “Lotte Reiniger” and includes a sharing icon to post the video on social pages.

Here’s the full video of today’s Google doodle with original music from Silas Hite:

Google also shared a “behind-the-scenes” video from Nat and Lo showcasing how the doodle was made: