[Apologies, Xoic. I read your post. But I need to get back to writing. This was me just trying out something on a whim based on one of my old hobbies I gave up on years ago. I have a habit of continually trying out hobbies or little projects when I should be focusing on my main one. Mods, please delete this. Thanks.]
How do the hinges show? Do you mean you can see the metal grommet heads? Those can be covered with black paper or something. When it said Lotte Reiniger used wires, I think she actually taped or glued thin wire on the underside so it would hold a pose. When they talk about using strong light form above, that wouldn't be to create a silhouette, but for 'normal' cutout animation, where you have details drawn or painted on the puppets and want to see it. Of course for real shadow-puppet stuff you would put up some kind of screen like a sheet with a bright single light source behind it and attach rods to the puppet, several per puppet, and it would require several operators for each puppet, unless you're doing it stopmotion style, in which case you would want to attach wires behind the puppets and also going down from the feet to some kind of rig that can be moved incrementally, a separate rig for each puppet. Ideally you would have a way to detach the feet wires so a foot can be lifted when necessary, and the wires can be easily re-attached when that foot is down as the weight-bearing foot. But ti all depends on how 'realisitc' (if such a term can be used for something as stylized as puppet or cutout animation) you want to be. I suppose you could make a table with 2 levels of glass, the puppets go on the lower one with your light under that, and some kind of translucent screen goes on the top one, like tracing paper. It would take some experimenting and tinkering to get it figured out. Or maybe you could hinge the layer of translucent material along one edge of the glass so you can hinge it out of the way, like a book page (Hah! Ties it in with writing!) to animate and then lay it back on top before shooting a frame. That sounds much simpler than 2 layers of glass. I think you could do it all on a makeshift light table, like is used for tracing images. You d need a layer of glass with a light source under it, possibly a translucent filter on the glass to even out the light (like tracing paper). The puppets could be laid right on top of that. Then another layer above it all, about 6 inches or more, with another sheet of glass and layer of tracing paper. I don't know, I'd need to mess around for a while to figure something out. But that can be done with simple things like just a flat shape to stand in for a puppet to work out problems.
