Young Terry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Animation

in Animation, Art, Comedy, Film | August 12th, 2011 6 Comments

Put aside 14 min­utes and Ter­ry Gilliam, the leg­endary Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor, will show you how to make your own cutout ani­ma­tions. Gilliam start­ed out his career as an ani­ma­tor, then moved to Eng­land and joined up with Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. For years, he worked as the group’s ani­ma­tor, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es.

If you’ve nev­er tak­en a good look at his work, you will want to spend some time with The Mir­a­cle of Flight from 1974, or this ani­mat­ed sequence, Sto­ry Time, from 1968.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin on Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed


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Comments (6)
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  • Grant Hughes says:
    August 11, 2011 at 11:17 am

    Ter­ry Gilliam is one of a kind. No one has ever been on the same page as the man.

    Reply
  • Ana says:
    August 28, 2011 at 11:20 am

    The joy of the man with his cutouts is sheer inspi­ra­tion. :)) Amaz­ing Ter­ry Gilliam, such a won­der­ful artist.

    Reply
  • Jay Schwartz says:
    October 10, 2013 at 6:50 am

    This dadaist approves. Genius is as genius does …

    Reply
  • Deon Houghton says:
    April 27, 2014 at 12:02 pm

    One of the most under­rat­ed genius­es of the PYTHON group. I love his work. All of it! The ani­ma­tion the direct­ing and his stand in char­ac­ters such as Pat­sy in the Holy Grail. He has one of my dream jobs! It’s one of the mir­a­cles of the inter­net that we can feel as if we are actu­al­ly sit­ting in a room with him watch­ing him work. Man would i love spend­ing a week work­ing with him! I bet it’s a blast! When you weren’t laugh­ing too hard to get some actu­al work in that is. I won­der what type of cam­era he liked best and/or has he switched to dig­i­tal now and how that is done. Thanks for the les­son Ter­ry!

    Reply
  • Utkal Mohanty says:
    November 19, 2014 at 9:27 am

    Won­der­ful. Wish I had seen this clip when I was a child ( if that was pos­si­ble.)

    Reply
  • Ellena says:
    July 28, 2024 at 6:02 am

    I always loved the ani­mat­ed sequences in “Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus”. I was too young to realised that it was Ter­ry Gilliam who cre­at­ed them. I love how he achieved what he did with every­day mate­ri­als, lim­it­ed tech­nol­o­gy and an over­dose of cre­ativ­i­ty, humour, clev­er­ness, and clear­ly patience and atten­tion to detail. I was so enthralled, I watched right to the very end, and was star­tled when I saw Sponge­bob in the clos­ing cred­its! It’s unmis­tak­able. I can only imag­ine that Gilliam’s genius inspired the cre­ator of Sponge­bob Squarepants to cre­ate his icon­ic char­ac­ter whose long-run­ning series has become a house­hold name, like Mon­ty Python was in the 1970s. Thank you, Mr Gilliam, for many years of enter­tain­ment!

    Reply

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