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The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

Silhouette animation is one of many forms of stop motion. More specifically, it is a form of cutout animation, which involves the frame-by-frame moving of cut-out shapes on an animation stand.

Traditional cutout animation is illuminated from the same side of the artwork as the camera is located (or from the sides of the artwork) so as to show the details of the paper such as color, textures, etc. The most prevalent use of cutout animation has been in Eastern Europe, where it has been a popular technique since the 1940s, being used in award-winning films such as Tale of Tales. In the West, cutout animation is probably better known for having been used to produce the demo pilot for Comedy Central's South Park series (then later simulated via computer animation for the main series).

When backlit, cutout animation becomes a series of simplified dark (black) images, and is referred to as silhouette animation. It was pioneered by the German animator Lotte Reiniger, who used it to make many shorts as well as the oldest-surviving feature-length animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).

Today, silhouette animation is rarely used as its own art form, except for brief dramatic or comedic scenes in a few cutout animation films, such as when a character turns the lights out in an episode of South Park. However, there have been a few complete films using this technique that have been made by animators under the National Film Board of Canada banner.

More recently, computer-generated silhouette animation has been used in a few films. Michel Ocelot's feature film Princes and Princesses (2000), from France, is one example, as is the Academy-Award-nominated Australian short film The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. While the former film retains the two-dimensional look of cutout animation, the latter uses 3D characters and CGI.