A man and his wife who wanted to make animated movies thought up an interesting device. The device has since been reproduced in a smaller scale as a novelty. Maybe you have seen the plastic and metal gadgets where you can press your hand under a bunch of pins and the heads of the pins will rise up to the plastic and show the topography of your hand. Although it was a very unique way of making animation, it was not widely put into practice. Alexandre Alexeieff and his wife Claire Parker made 6 very short films using their method of pin screen animation, and a few other people have since used the board to make their own animations.
More recently, a French man named Alexandre Noyer has since made another pin screen using computer aided design. The new pin screen is to be housed at La Bande Video in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. There will be opportunities to use the new device named L’Alpine for artists in residency among others.
Pins in the original devices were not used to make the animations directly. Instead, the pins were lighted from the side so that they cast shadows from the shapes formed by using small objects to press on the points of the pins. In a documentary from 1973 that lasts around 9 minutes, the couple, Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, share their invention with a room of interested people.
Below is a video directed by Directed by Jacques Drouin in 1976, which was made by pin screen animation.