Paint On Glass Animation

Since I've no hope of ever owning a real multiplane camera, I made an extremely basic copy to try perspective tricks with. The first test just involved seeing the effect of moving one glass panel back. It doesn't help that the camera moves as well, but I think this set up works quite well, making creating a sense of depth a bit easier. The only thing is that the frames and viewpoint of the camera mean that you don't just see the action.

In the next test I also tried out paint on glass animation...it went...ok. The main problem was that because there was no outline, the blocks of colour merged some features into others, making the action unclear and sometimes messy. Animating two figures separately was fine, it made times when they overlap easier, but the whole process felt too time consuming, with poor results, for the finished animation. Compared to sand animation, paint on glass felt less immediate, with less personal energy in there as well. The glass helped for scale, but I started to rely on it solely, losing some of the details of the walk of the figure, like a decline in height when he reaches the steps.