Six Points to remember when writing for animation.
1. Make use of the animated format; Be a little bit reckless visually. Take advantage of the opportunities that live action writers don’t have.
2. Try this: Before you write a scene, close your eyes and try to see it the way you would on a TV. Play the scene out in your mind a few times until its clear, then rewind and write down how you imagined it.
3. Where possible, keep dialogue brief. The more you look at a character talking, the more you realise that you’re looking at a cartoon, this breaks the illusion. Animators, no matter how skilful they are, still won’t be as good at acting as say; Johnny Depp.
In some market research I had to take one of the cartoons that I’d worked on to a school. The main thing that I noticed was that when there was a lengthy chunk of dialogue on a character close up, the kids tended to get distracted.
4. Don’t assume that the animation will carry the action in a scene.
Drawings aren’t that good at acting, so if you were to write something like:
‘She looks at him without understanding’
it’s going to be very difficult to animate. You’ll need a line that says
‘I don’t understand’ from the character to help it along.
In short; don’t try to be subtle, animation should caricature real life, not try to imitate it.
5. It’s more entertaining to write character driven stories than to write a script that is centred on finding something.
‘Gee professor, we have to find the magic crystal powerstone before Nightfire does or the world is doomed’.
These scripts are 10 a penny. It’s much more interesting to take the character and tell his or her story instead.
6. Think and write more in terms of visual humor rather than trying to write verbal humor. If you look at the Simpsons, some of the best moments are when the characters go a full minute without any dialogue. This is the purest form of animation.
2. Try this: Before you write a scene, close your eyes and try to see it the way you would on a TV. Play the scene out in your mind a few times until its clear, then rewind and write down how you imagined it.
3. Where possible, keep dialogue brief. The more you look at a character talking, the more you realise that you’re looking at a cartoon, this breaks the illusion. Animators, no matter how skilful they are, still won’t be as good at acting as say; Johnny Depp.
In some market research I had to take one of the cartoons that I’d worked on to a school. The main thing that I noticed was that when there was a lengthy chunk of dialogue on a character close up, the kids tended to get distracted.
4. Don’t assume that the animation will carry the action in a scene.
Drawings aren’t that good at acting, so if you were to write something like:
‘She looks at him without understanding’
it’s going to be very difficult to animate. You’ll need a line that says
‘I don’t understand’ from the character to help it along.
In short; don’t try to be subtle, animation should caricature real life, not try to imitate it.
5. It’s more entertaining to write character driven stories than to write a script that is centred on finding something.
‘Gee professor, we have to find the magic crystal powerstone before Nightfire does or the world is doomed’.
These scripts are 10 a penny. It’s much more interesting to take the character and tell his or her story instead.
6. Think and write more in terms of visual humor rather than trying to write verbal humor. If you look at the Simpsons, some of the best moments are when the characters go a full minute without any dialogue. This is the purest form of animation.
posted by Tony Ealey at 4:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home