Reader Question: What Is Silhouette Animation?

Izzy asks:

"yo so i saw this spooky totally creeptastic like animation with like black stuff and they were puppets i think but they were flat and it was jsut black and white like the old silent films dude whwat was it it totally gave me nightmares"

I can name a few things that, like, totally give me nightmares too, dude...but silhouette animation isn't one of them. The marionette comparison actually wasn't too far off, considering the old-school methods for animating dark silhouettes against a light backdrop.