Terry Gilliam Cutout Animation

Over the past few weeks creating the character designs and animatic for our groups storyboard project I have been keeping in mind the methods and techniques of my influential pioneer Terry Gilliam.

Because our animation will be both 3d stopmotion and cutout I wanted to focus on doing cutout as I could experiment with Terry Gilliams methods of movement and of putting together puppets. Using his video guide and tutorial on how he creates the puppets, I have a good understanding of his methods, which I will be replicating during the creation and animation process.

While I had proposed to create a mixed media monster to use in my 2D animation project, Instead I decided to create a digital puppet made using drawings, however I plan to animate these creatures as if they were cutouts. They will feature a series of solid body parts that I will create a puppet out of using Toon Boom harmony, as we just learned in class how to animate and create complex puppets.


I want the wolves to have a more robotic and unnatural feel to them, and I think the limited style of cutout will work well as it will add a more uneasy and unnatural aspect to the movements, where something with easing, squash and stretch etc that comes with traditional 2D would be what the viewer expects and relates more to the protagonist, who will be animated using the principals of animation.

To animate these puppets I won't be using auto-animate with key frames, instead I will animate frame by frame as to replicate the stop motion aesthetic that Terry Gilliam achieves through his cutout stop motion work, even if it is in a digital format compared to my pioneers works.