Papercut animation workshops for adults

As part of the continuum: Independent animation from Japan and Australia exhibition and event series, The Japan Foundation, Sydney presents a papercut animation workshop.

Inspired by given texts and poetry, workshop participants will be working in small groups to design and produce an abstract, layering animation sequence, that illustrates the idea of change over time and continuum. The outcome of the workshop will be a screening of everyone’s stop-motion animations compiled into one experimental short video that will also be shared online.

This workshop is suitable for ages 15 and over.

Papercut or cut-out animation is one of the oldest and simplest animation techniques. It involves producing animations using 2D flat characters, props and scenes cut from materials such as paper, card and fabric. Animators separate characters into smaller segments, piece together the individual cut-out shapes and move them in small steps, taking a single picture at each step to create the illusion of movement. The world's earliest known animated feature films were made using this technique by animators such as Quirino Cristiani and Lotte Reiniger. Throughout the years, papercut animation has featured on both the big and the small screen, in music videos and even in video games. A more recent work that used papercut stop-motion animation for its pilot episode is the well-known series South Park.

Header Image: (c) Eva Lam aged 9 (pink bunny)