192 Animation Writing and Development
humor. Study what films and television shows are successful in that country and which ones
fail. Visual humor is almost universal.
Comedy in Your Original Project
If you’re developing an original project, rather than writing comedy for someone else, you
want your comedy to be particularly fresh. One thing you might want to consider is char-
acter point of view. If you give one of your main characters a point of view that’s totally
unique and off-center, that view of reality will change the entire world around him, and
you’ll have a funny script. Another way to develop fresh material is to create a new story-
telling style that’s uniquely suited to this one project. Or you might want to develop a style
that’s especially suited to you! You can brand yourself with an original style as some stand-
up comics do. This will make you stand out from the pack, but it will also limit you. Devel-
oping a unique style can take time. It may develop naturally over the course of several
projects if you let it. Then try to write what you know well and what you feel strongly about.
If you’re honest, the details will ring true. We’ll laugh at what we recognize in ourselves and
the others we know.
Reference
Watch the old silent films. Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy are especially good for
learning animation comedy. Watch the Our Gang comedies and The Three Stooges early
sound films. You can learn from clowns as well. All of these are visual.
Checklist
- Is the very premise of your script a funny one?
- Are the majority of your gags visual? Did you use the types of gags that work best
in animation, motion gags, gags that defy the laws of physics? - Does all of the comedy relate directly to the story and characters with nothing extra-
neous? - Is much of your humor based on your characters’ personalities? Have you used these
attitudes and reactions to the best effect? - Are all your gags in character, true to the established personalities in that script?
- Can your star dig herself in deeper and deeper for funnier and funnier results?
- If you’re writing for a current series, is your humor similar to the humor already estab-
lished for that series, and do you have about the same ratio of gags per page? - If this is an original script, are all of your characters as different from each other as
possible in order to heighten the comedy?