Pinscreen Animation - The Animation Technique

The Animation Technique

According to Claire Parker, the images created by the pinscreen made it possible to make an animated movie which escaped from the flat, "comic" aspect of cel animation and plunged instead into the dramatic and the poetic by the exploitation of chiaroscuro, or shading effects. To obtain the desired gray tones that are cast from the shadows of the pins, several methods are used.

The original pinscreen used by Alexeïeff had 240,000 pins which were usually pressed with a small tool, one pin at a time or with other specialized instruments. Frames are created one at a time, each frame modifying the one previous to itself. After each frame has been photographed, the images are strung together to create an image without pauses. The pin and frame assembly was built very solidly and mounted in a secure fashion to offer a stable image to the animation camera day after day, week after week as each image of the movie was painstakingly composed.

This form of animation is extremely time consuming and difficult to execute, rendering it the least popular method of animation. An additional reason for its unpopularity is its expensive nature. Individually, the pins are relatively cheap; however, it is not uncommon that a million or more may be used to complete a single screen, quickly increasing the cost for manufacture.