Why Animators Should "Make it Funnier"

On the set of "Robots" at Blue Sky Studios, Fox Animation studio head Chris Meledandri always seemed to give the same note to the animators and the story team: "make it funnier".  Chris always wanted more jokes, more comedy, more entertainment.  

"Make it funnier" is not a bad note. As they say in Hollywood, "funny is money". Animators should always remember that at the end of the day we are working in the entertainment industry; once we have mastered the body mechanics and the technical skills to make our characters move convincingly, we have to give a great performance, make our work fun to watch. 

In the end, audiences don't care that much about technical skills - they just want to be entertained.

Buster Keaton and The Art of Visual Comedy

Buster Keaton was one of the great comedians of the silent comedy era. In this eight minute video, you can see why, like Charlie Chaplin, Keaton was a master of the visual gag.  Why should animators study this stuff? Because animators are actors, and we have to make our acting work on a visual level.  If your scene doesn't work with the sound turned off - it isn't working.

Why Should Animators Watch Charlie Chaplin movies?

The Little Tramp. Photo: Wikipedia

Why should animators watch Charlie Chaplin films? Nancy Beiman, former supervising animator at Disney Feature Animation and now one of the key professors at Sheridan College in Toronto, thinks she has the answer.

It's because animators are, in the end, pantomime artists, and Chaplin was the greatest pantomimer of them all. At the 2014 SAS (Society of Animation Studies) conference in Toronto, Nancy explained how animation and silent film comedy developed together, inspiring one another to perfect the art of physical comedy.