Chase Tag Exercise for Animators

World Chase Tag being played

I recently discovered there is an adult competitive league for the child’s game of tag. It’s a one on one game played for 20 seconds on an obstacle course. It’s probably best to just roll the video.

Most animators are familiar with the sport of parkour, and this game obviously shares most of the same physical skills. I have seen many student videos that feature a character doing parkour, as a way to demonstrate body mechanics.

As an alternative exercise, may I suggest having two actors playing tag? I think this has some significant advantages over parkour.

  1. Parkour is a solo event, but in tag, the players have a relationship, they interact. You can add emotions to the performance.
  2. Tag includes a chase. Chases are a basic tool of physical comedy. Tom & Jerry, the RoadRunner, etc all include chases.
  3. The environment could be anywhere. As simple or complex as you want. Where would be an inappropriate place to play a game? You can even have props a character can move to obstruct the chasing player. Get creative.
  4. Chases can involve hiding, which allows for the possibility of surprise. Maybe the chased player ducks out sight, appearing in an unexpected place.
  5. It can have an ending, with a player being tagged, which can be dramatized in any way you can think of.

There was a feature film, “Tag”, made about a group of adult men who had been running the same game of tag since they were kids. Perhaps watch that for inspiration. Here are a couple of shots from that.

Tag movie image 1
Tag movie image 2

Think about it like a Jackie Chan fight scene. Jackie is often trying to avoid blows, so he bends and twists out of reach. He gets extremely clever in setting up scenes.

Jackie Chan hiding.

Everybody knows the game of tag, so they can relate to what they are seeing. If you simply have “tag” in the title, viewers can immediately know what’s going on, and you don’t need to waste any time. PLEASE let me know if you do an exercise like this, I will promote it for you!

Laurel & Hardy: How to be Stupid

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were two of the greatest physical comedians on film. Before teaming up, they acted separately in hundreds of short films. Stan had a career in music hall working under Fred Karno along with Charlie Chaplin. Together, the two struck gold with their carefully crafted comedy of errors. They began in silent films, and when sound came along, they were one of the few acts to prosper with the new technology. They weren’t just slapstick. They could work verbal comedy, and relationship comedy with the various husband and wife scenarios they created. But mostly they are known for the trouble they got into with their half-baked thinking.

It’s important to understand that they each have a style of stupidity. Being foolish has many shades from the drooling idiot who seems to understand nothing, to the absent minded professor who is both brilliant and bumbling. When creating a stupid character, there are many directions to take. Stan Laurel’s character is primarily a simpleton. His mind doesn’t quite handle complex thought. Oliver Hardy is an aspirational fool. He wants to do things well, he can concoct plans, but he overestimates himself and his partner. Ollie is usually the motivator. In real life, Stan Laurel was the creative force in the pair, but in character it was Ollie’s job to get the ball rolling.

One of the ways Laurel and Hardy were different from other comedians was that there were fewer surprises. The audience can see the gags coming. As they are doing the stupid thing, it builds anticipation in the audience, and the gag is the payoff. Because they are stupid, Stan and Ollie do NOT see what is going to happen.

How does one start a story where your character can make themselves look stupid? In physical comedy, it’s all about getting into a difficult situation. Some of their best works were built around one simple challenge, such as deliver a piano up a huge flight of steps. While there is a lot of hard labor, they also get numerous unexpected obstacles. Of course, making them move vertically in space allows gravity (an essential component in physical comedy) to work its magic. In Berth Marks all they have to do is climb into an upper berth on a Pullman train car, change clothes, and get into bed. Squeezing 2 people into a small space allows them very close interaction. The simpler the challenge, the stupider your character looks when they struggle with it. When things get awkward, they can make it worse. In comedy, a situation can never be too awkward, it’s a just a matter of getting there in a way through a sequence of events that build on each other.

Berth Marks

Through all of their films, the most basic way they show their stupidity is they just don’t seem to learn. I would call this rule #1. With carefully arranged variations, they will make essentially the same mistake again and again. At a construction site, Stan will not learn that Ollie needs a sturdy plank to walk on. After three bricks in a row land on his head, Ollie appears to believe that must be all of them, so he doesn’t move out of the way of the fourth. They are endlessly surprised at what happens to them, while the audience knows exactly what’s coming. Watching their reactions is half the fun.

Inattention is a very useful tool in comedy. In a duo like L&H, having one of them not looking at what they are doing or where they are walking is an easy to set up a fall or blow. You know those YouTube videos of people looking at their cel phones while walking, and falling into a fountain? That’s what I’m talking about.

They were great at setting up misunderstandings. In Blockheads, Stan is at a veteran’s hospital and he finds a wheel chair to sit in for a bit. It’s arranged in such a way that to sit in it he has to fold his leg underneath himself. When Ollie shows up, he believes Stan lost his leg in the war. One thing leads to another, and Oliver ends up carrying Stan completely unaware that he has two good legs.

Blockheads

Miscommunication is a basic way for things to go wrong. Conversations between them are often tortured. Mostly it’s Stan’s slowness. He twist sentences and mangles common phrases. He’s not just dumb, he is artfully dumb in an entertaining way. Stan’s misunderstanding is clearly evident on his face. Oliver gets frustrated, and it’s all part of the comedy.

However, they are not always at odds with each other. Sometimes they work together quite well. The problem is, those are always the times when they are getting into trouble. They can, without words, jump into the same fight with someone else. Neither will ever hold the other back from doing something stupid.

One of their best known styles of comedy was the tit-for-tat routine. As mentioned above, the could get into battles of one-upmanship with rivals. In Big Business, they get into a scrape with James Finlayson, and through the course of the film, a house and a car are seriously damaged. They were very good at keeping the comedy ball rolling. They could trigger the chain reaction, and do whatever is necessary to not let it slow down. Where a normal person would endeavor to interrupt the failing process, they would throw gasoline on the fire.

If they break something, that is just the start of a series of gags when they try to fix it. One thing should lead to another in a semi-logical system of cause and effect. In Busy Bodies, after shaving off a strip of Ollie’s pants, Stan glues it back on. But that was just to introduce the glue which causes further humiliation and destruction. Ultimately, it leads to Stan using carpentry tools to shave off the glue brush bristles from Ollies face.

Busy Bodies

While other comedians like Keaton and Chaplin could be extremely clever, and come out of their stories having won more than they lost, Laurel & Hardy films nearly always ended with everything in a complete shambles. They had several prop model T cars built to end up either falling to pieces, crushed to half its size but still drivable, or literally sawed in half. In Helpmates, Stan comes over to help Ollie clean up his house before his wife gets back, and it ends up with the house burned up.

Helpmates

In my book, I discuss “redemption.” What that means is stupid characters need some redeeming qualities to make them appealing. Stan and Ollie worked together for years, and they were able to create the sense that they were committed friends. They needed each other and would stick together through thick and thin. They keep going even when things look very bad, and audiences admire that.

Inazma Delivery Service

 

If you asked me what animation director I would most like to work with, the first name that would come to mind would be Satoshi Tomioka.  He is responsible for the fantastic Usavich Rabbits that ran on MTV Japan.

So I am thrilled to find new work from Tomioka’s company, Kanaban Graphics.  Inazma Delivery Service is a series of short videos on “Space Shower TV”  The delivery service employee is a pig-like character named Hemingway, and he becomes responsible for a lost space alien, named Bytheway.  Bytheway always wears a shark costume.  If you like Usavich Rabbits, you will no doubt enjoy Inazma Delivery Service.  It has an identical format, with very short episodes stringing together a longer story.  It has a similar 8 bit video game music track.   Also, these two characters are very similar to the Usavich Rabbits, Kirenenko and Putin.  One of them is a nervous character who worries and sweats.  The other has unpredictable fits of rage.  It seems as if Tomioka likes this particular combination.  He probably finds them effective in creating situations that are both comedic and dramatic.   Artists do well when they know their signature style, and spend time exploring the possibilities.

Inazma Delivery Service introduces an improvement over Usavich, by having a somewhat emotional moment in the story.  Episode nine is a powerful 2 minutes.  Be sure to watch that far.

The show is almost 100 % visual comedy.  It is silly and bizarre and full of high energy gags.  Below, you can see the first ten episodes, which I pieced together from YouTube.

 

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