Google doodle marks 117th birthday of pioneering film-maker Lotte Reiniger

Reiniger created visually spectacular films using only black cardboard and scissors

Lotte Reiniger pictured in 1939

Google doodle is marking the 117^th birthday of Lotte Reiniger, the German film-maker who revolutionised the Asian craft of silhouette puppetry.

Pre-dating Walt Disney by nearly a decade, Reiniger created visually spectacular films using only black cardboard and scissors.

Reiniger pioneered a style of animation that used thousands of photos of paper cut-out silhouettes to tell a story, a style that has gone on to inspire many modern day film makers.

Here are five facts you may not know about the landmark visual artist.

An aspiring actress

As a teenager Reiniger is said to have fallen in love with the cinema, having a particular penchant for the special-effect filled films of Georges Méliès and those of the actor and director Paul Wegener, known for The Golem.

Reiniger convinced her parents to enroll her at Deutsches Theater Berlin where she studied acting with Max Rheinhardt before turning to focus on her work as an animator.

Folk stories and fairy tales

In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats to create a film of the famous folk tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The success of this work saw her admitted into the Institute for Cultural Research - an experimental animation and short film studio in Germany.

Reiniger’s work was frequently inspired by European folk stories and myths with her productions including titles such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots and Hansel and Gretel.

Reiniger went on to make more than 60 animated films between the 1910s and 70s. Around 40 of these are understood to have survived.

Precursor to Disney

Reiniger anticipated Walt Disney by a decade by devising the first multi-plane camera for effects. In addition to Reiniger's silhouettes some of her films also used dream-like backgrounds and symphonic scores.

Leaving Germany amid the Nazi advance

Reiniger left Germany after the Nazis took hold of the country. Speaking of the period later she said: “I didn't like this whole Hitler thing and because I had many Jewish friends whom I was no longer allowed to call friends."

Primrose Productions

Reiniger went on to live in England with her husband Carl Koch. The pair founded Primrose Productions through which she produced a number of works for the BBC as well as other corporations.

The British Film Institute’s Philip Kemp said of her: “No one else has taken a specific animation technique and made it so utterly her own.

“To date she has no rivals, and for all practical purposes the history of silhouette animation begins and ends with Reiniger”

She died aged 82 in Dettenhausen, Germany on 19 June 1981.