BLOG: Gabriel Kempers‘ Madam Butterfly, above, is brought to us today using an animation style built off of the claymation technique Strata Cut and pioneered by Javen Ivey while in school at Pratt.

It’s called Strata Stencil, and uses layers of stenciled paper to animate sculptural forms and characters in-camera.

Since Ivey began working this way, we’ve seen Strata Stencil pop up everywhere from paper towel ads to Harry Potter. And that’s a good thing – this form of animation gives the illusion of cg while maintaining the painstaking artfulness of paper cut animation.