--- title: Google Doodle Celebrates German Animator Lotte Reiniger description: German animator Lotte Reiniger was famous for creating movies from black cardboard paper. canonical: https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-02T06:47:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:32:54.705Z og:title: New Google Doodle Celebrates German Animator Lotte Reiniger og:description: Reiniger was famous for creating movies from black cardboard paper og:url: https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Google Doodle Celebrates German Animator Lotte Reiniger twitter:description: Reiniger was famous for creating movies from black cardboard paper twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Google's New Doodle Celebrates Lotte Reiniger, One of the First Animated Filmmakers by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jun 2, 2016 6:47 AM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jun 2, 2016 6:47 AM UTC Nearly a century before Pixar — the studio behind some of the most popular animated movies of today — was founded, and more than a decade before Walt Disney would start the company that would go on to be synonymous with iconic cartoons, there was [Lotte Reiniger](https://www.google.com/doodles/lotte-reinigers-117th-birthday) — the subject of Thursday’s Google Doodle. The German animator was famous for creating movies from black cardboard paper, which she would painstakingly cut out into hundreds of shapes while constantly taking photographs. On what would have been Reiniger’s 117th birthday, Google paid tribute by creating a movie about her within its logo — exactly how she would’ve done it. Here’s a behind-the-scenes [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time%5Fcontinue=32&v=MK1P6RGs6U4) showing how doodler Olivia Huynh created the film you see in the Google logo. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/"},"headline":"Google's New Doodle Celebrates Lotte Reiniger, One of the First Animated Filmmakers","datePublished":"2016-06-02T06:47:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:32:54.705Z","description":"With a film depicting her using the iconic methods","url":"https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Paper","Google Doodle","Walt Disney","films","german","Animation"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4354675/google-doodle-lotte-reiniger-animator-117th-birthday/","name":"Google's New Doodle Celebrates Lotte Reiniger, One of the First Animated Filmmakers"}}]}] ```