Here is a great example of cartoony human acting. These two are from the clown act Aga Boom, here performing in Cirque du Soleil’s “O”. The person in the yellow robe is particularly fun to watch. I now think this person is a woman. Her poses are very strong, nice crisp motion. Her big shoes give in a strong grounding the way Mickey Mouse’s do. The Iceberg looks like it came out of a Chilly Willy cartoon. There is no story, but they are silly, profane, frightened, imaginative and romantic in a limited space and limited time. Their character is greater than their situation.
Month: July 2017
Peter Sellers – Inspector Clouseau
The team of Peter Sellers and director Blake Edwards brought some great slapstick to the sound movies. Every animator should know their work. Here are a few great examples from the Pink Panther films.
Clouseau paid his butler to try surprise attacks. It’s an interesting relationship, with the appearing to want to kill each other, then being all business.
This next one is classic struggle to solve a problem. It makes me think of Chuck Jones.
Just the idea is funny: Man with a full leg cast tries to use airplane toilet.
Eccentric Dancing: The Honeymooners.
Animators need to watch eccentric dancing. This is dancing that’s intended to make you laugh. It’s the simplest form of physical comedy. To help introduce you to the best funny dancing of the past, I post the best clips I can find. If you click on the tag “dance” to the right, you can see more.
Here I share two great clips from the classic television show The Honeymooners. If you aren’t familiar with the program, it was an inspiration for the The Flintstones. The star was Jackie Gleason, his character was named Ralph Kramden. His buddy was his upstairs neighbor, Ed Norton, played by actor Art Carney.
In one episode, Ralph wants to learn to dance, so Ed tries shows him some moves.
This next compilation is set to some fun music, and gives a quick look at Jackie Gleason’s dancing.
One-upsmanship
I did a search on Vimeo for “cartoon” and came across this nice little short:
The Artists from Giant Creative on Vimeo.
It made me think about animated shorts in which one character tries to outdo another character. It’s called “one-upsmanship”, and it’s a form of the basic comic structure of rivalry. The one that immediately came to my mind is “One Man Band” from Pixar.
Pixar – One Man Band from Ricardo Pereira on Vimeo.
Now I’m one-upping the cartoons. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Tex Avery’s King Size Canary. If you can top that, you could be an animation god. Please leave a comment if you can think of other animations or live action film that use this story approach.
A note on gags from Disney Animation
I am reading the book Before Ever After, The Lost Lectures of Walt Disney’s Animation Studio, by Don Hahn and Tracey Miller-Zarneke. The book is primarily a compilation of lecture notes collected by Don Graham. They were from classes held at the Chouinard Art Institute, and were part of the preparations for Disney’s entry into feature film animation. Since my special interest is comedy in animation, I went through the index, and found a handful of entries on the topic of gags. The first of these came in an interview conducted by a Dr. Morkovin, with animator Art Babbitt.
This set of notes contained a remarkable description of how to successfully put over a comic moment in a film. First, in story building they create unusual situations. But then the animator has the special challenge of getting the audience to engage with the character on screen. This really is where the animator takes over from the story man, and becomes the performer. The animator’s goal is to get the spectator to identify with the character, to imagine him or herself being in the character’s shoes. Here is the first quote that really rang out to me.
There are two ways of doing this: one, through the mental channel – sympathy with the character or antagonism toward the menace. That is story building. The other is through empathy – physical sympathy with the character expressed throught thru the spectator’s body. (illustrated “empathy” by citing example of clown in circus pretending to lose his equilibrium in a very precarious position – whole audience is excited and shares the sensation with the clown of falling and recovering balance just in time… the clown plays on this physical reaction of the audience to enhance the relief and effectiveness of this stunt which he finally executes completely.
I love notes that use live physical performers as the basis for the idea. That’s what my book is all about.
You must get into the body of your spectator. In order to do that you must make your character so living, his action so convincing, that identification is possible… For example, when Pluto was on skates, struggling with him (Pluto) in his effort to gain or regain balance… the spectator had to identify himself with Pluto in order to follow logically all his funny, ridiculous, preposterous movement and exertion, in order to have 100% reaction.
If the animation is thoughtful and detailed you will recognize the truth in how the character acts, and you will believe in what they are going through. Taking the small actions and exaggerating them so the audience can’t misunderstand. Timing it out so they can recognize the important poses and movements instantly. Of course, that is what the principles of animation are all about, but this a unique description of the end goal, to get the spectator to feel what the character is feeling.
