How To... Get Animated About Comedy

There are countless approaches to define the rules of comedy and I do not dare say what works and what doesn’t. I am no writer and definitely no comedian. All I know for sure is that how people define humour varies a lot and even more so when it comes to animation.

Too frequently I meet people who see animation as something that is funny in itself. I find that very irritating. As Brad Bird said: “Animation is not a genre. It is a method of storytelling.” There is no comedy in animation if the idea or story itself is not funny. There is no difference between live action and animation in this regard. 

When we received the script for our 'stoner birds' project for EnBW [Guter Stoff, below],  it already had the main ingredients for comedy; the characters, the joke with the cat and the payoff that was linked to the product. But the style - the 'method of storytelling' as Bird would say - wasn’t defined at that point. The only reason animation was chosen at all was the fact that those birds had to speak fluent German. And we couldn’t find real ones with such skills...

On visual styles and animation techniques 

I like to see animation as some sort of creative realm in which a funny story can be rolled out and amplified, maybe even turned into something that wouldn’t be funny in the real world, as we can defy the laws of physics and alter and exaggerate characters and settings without limits. 

However, the ability to successfully create a piece of animation comedy will depend on which visual style and animation technique is chosen. There are common techniques like stop-motion, cel-animation, 3D-animation etc. that can be combined with photo-realistic, abstract or super-deformed styles just to name a few. With all the new styles and interpretations emerging constantly, it’s a seemingly endless scope of possibilities. (Which, by the way, proves that animation is an art form rather than a medium …) 

Take well-known shows such as The Simpsons, South Park, Wallace and Gromit, Rick and Morty (the list could go on forever) - they all have a very unique and very distinctive visual style and make use of different animation techniques.  Choosing these individual styles and animation techniques have had a huge impact on the way the humour is expressed and perceived. 

Sometimes a certain design or technique inspires a certain type of humour, but it can also be the other way round. For example, in the case of the EnBW project, encouraging the use of green energy is an important issue to us, therefore we instinctively went for a rather realistic character design rather than an abstract simplification like Angry Birds etc. which, in turn, would have projected the message to an abstract level. We immediately loved the contrast between the birds' lifelike look and the fact that these three fellows not only talk like college stoners but also get high on green electricity, so much so we never missed the level of exaggeration that we honestly like in other films.

On characters and acting

I guess character-building is essential to comedy in general. But it feels particularly important in animation. Despite its unique illustration style, it might seem a straight forward task to build a humanoid character/personality like Bart Simpson. But in animation you have to define so many more aspects than in live action. In fact, you have to define everything. And the more abstract you go, the more stylized your characters and settings become, the less you can apply conventional rules for character-building. Call it pure freedom of creativity. 

Performance and acting take on a whole new meaning in animation, because, ultimately, the story is nothing else but the way your character expresses itself. 

As a director for animation films you need to build your characters carefully and with great attention to detail. You need to know them inside out to be able to pass on the right instructions to your animators. The best animators I know of, are not merely pushing keyframes but possess certain performance skills and through animation they can literally jump into the role of the character, just like a writer or an actor. 

In regard to comedy, animation is not real-life, therefore the audience expects the unexpected. This means the acting and performance needs to be surprising to be funny. 

As we went for a more lifelike visual style in our project for EnBW, we tried to apply this overarching idea to the personalities of our characters and their acting. We chose to respect the animals’ physiology. Other than the eyes and the beaks/muzzle we treated everything as realistic as possible and tried to capture the characteristic habits of each species whilst also establishing a certain personality. Regarding the voice-acting and interaction, we found inspiration from watching live-action stoner movies, such as Half Baked [below] and tried to transfer this to our realistic-looking birds - which I guess you could say is a little unexpected.

On the animation process

Animation is always the hardest option for making a film because it’s so time-consuming. You have to go a long way from a storyboard to get to the final render, rather than the immediate results from shooting live-action. Something that seems funny at the beginning of the project can seem very draining further in the production process. 

Animation in general is a craft that demands great focus and patience. Whereas comedy works with spontaneity and intuition - I would hardly describe animation as a spontaneous process. 

For the EnBW project we spent weeks, even months, researching the anatomy of birds, modeling and texturing, rigging and simulating realistic behaviour of plumage and fur. Of course, the script was worked out in detail as well, but at least two thirds of the entire process was pure nerdiness. #nofun 

While we were super sharp-minded in the beginning of the project, it got harder and harder to keep focused on the comedy aspects of the production after some time. We simply couldn’t tell anymore if the jokes were funny because we had heard (and seen) them too often. In the long run it was great to have that detailed script that everybody approved up front. We also very much appreciated the fresh and honest opinion from agency creatives and our assisting writer throughout the process. 

After six months of production it was relieving to see how well it was perceived. Seems like we found out what’s funny to our audience after all …