technique
Multiplane in stop motion
Cutout animation / Silhouette animation
Definition
Multiplane is a set-and-camera technique that separates artwork, cutouts or set elements onto distinct planes at different distances from the lens, so the camera captures real optical parallax between them instead of depth painted onto a single flat plane.
Overview
Multiplane is a set-and-camera technique that separates artwork, cutouts or small set pieces onto distinct physical planes at different distances from the lens, so the camera records real optical parallax between them as they move at different relative rates. The depth this produces is genuinely photographic -- built by the actual separation between planes -- not painted or faked onto a single flat surface, which is why a multiplane shot reads as three-dimensional even when every individual element on it is flat.
Lotte Reiniger built the first working version of this rig between 1923 and 1926 for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, stacking silhouette cutouts on horizontal glass planes beneath a fixed overhead camera in a converted garage, with a crew of five repositioning and rephotographing the figures frame by frame exactly as any other stop-motion element is shot. That makes her version the stop-motion-lineage case: each pane was reset shot to shot, not fed continuously the way Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks's later, taller vertical multiplane camera fed cel artwork on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio roughly a decade afterward.
Outside a studio budget, the mechanics scale down cleanly. Animator Jim Doran documents a DIY multiplane stand built from four vertical wooden posts drilled with evenly spaced peg holes, carrying glass panes on removable wooden pegs so each pane's height and spacing can be reset per shot. The visible wood is painted matte black to kill reflections in the glass, the glass edges are taped for safety, and the whole stand sits on a separate camera platform -- depth comes purely from how far apart the pegs place each pane and how independently the artwork on each one is animated.
Cutout and silhouette animation, where the subject is inherently flat, are the techniques multiplane serves most directly: the physical planes supply depth the artwork itself cannot. On a fully three-dimensional puppet or miniature-set production, the same parallax is normally solved by the set's real depth and camera placement rather than an added glass-plane rig, so multiplane stays a cutout/silhouette specialist's tool rather than a general stop-motion default.
Workflow
- Decide how many depth planes the shot needs and what sits on each -- background, midground, foreground elements or characters -- before building anything, since the rig's spacing follows that plan.
- Build or set vertical supports with evenly spaced mounting points so each pane's height can be fixed and reset precisely between shots.
- Paint every visible support surface matte black and tape all glass edges -- reflections and exposed edges are the two most common practical failures of a home-built rig.
- Mount the artwork, cutouts or set pieces on their assigned planes and lock the camera off directly above or in front of the full stack.
- Animate and reposition each plane's elements independently frame by frame, moving planes at different relative rates (or holding some still) so the single fixed lens records real parallax between them.