ASK DOCTOR UNCLE EDDIE:
This week's question: "I love the cartoon I'm making but I have to admit that it doesn't really take off till the middle. By then half my audience is gone! How do I start a cartoon?"
-Perplexed
Dear Perplexed: "It's easy! You start a cartoon the way a dirty joke teller starts a dirty joke. The first thing a joke teller does is make you like him, the teller. He establishes his own personality first. He dominates the scene, he gets a rhythm going, he exudes playful mischief, he creates an atmosphere which is electric with potential."
"That done, he gets started on the set-up. The set-up is the most important part of the joke. It has to be ignorant as hell. The teller gets you to smile and even laugh way before the punch line. It's as if the real joke was that the people in the story would put themselves in such an improbable and silly situation. The punch line is just an excuse to justify the funny set-up."
"Transpose all of this to a cartoon and you have your beginning. How do I know it works? Because this is more or less what Bob Clampett did. He'd start a barnyard cartoon by first establishing that it was a cool barnyard, where cool animals live. He infused the cartoon with a bouncey rhythm and a sense of life and playfulness before the plot ever got started. He took the time to make friends with the audience. A lot of animation directors seem like they're scared of the audience and try to keep it at a distance. Directors like Bob and Tex liked the people they were making cartoons for and took pains to bring them in."
BTW, the caricature of Uncle Eddie is by John K.
I wish more directors took Clampett and Avery's approach. I don't know why the others would want such a distance from the audince; I thought the idea of a good cartoon *was* to bring the audience in! Otherwise it's not always as easy to enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI remember the night of God-awful Ub Iwerks cartoons I sat through at UCLA's Melnitz Hall around 1990. Animated crapfest after animated crapfest unspooled, in pristine, razor-sharp nitrate Cinecolor prints, the audience gradually developing one palpable communal migraine as their patience and goodwill wore thin. THEN, over an hour into this thing, up popped a run-of-the-mill black and white Warners cartoon, one on which Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones were animators loaned out to the Iwerks Studio. Iwerks apparently had directed this entry to help Warners make a deadline, but it was saved from the dreary fate of everything else he touched by Carl Stallings' easygoing, bouncy music score and by the sheer appeal of the characters themselves. One could feel the weight of amassed stress unburden itself from the frontal lobes of the weary crowd, whose central nervous systems were ready to implode from watching the repetitive, uninspired Willie Whopper. This Warners cartoon marked the lone likable entry in that overlong night's Iwerks cartoon craporama. You are right, Eddie. There is a lot to be said for a cartoon being likable in the first place. You've got to want to spend time with the characters and the Warners leads were hands down more enjoyable to watch than the junk poor lost Ub was doing, even though Ub was without doubt a drop-dead genius at animating circles with a compass and building multiplane cameras out of parts from old Chevys. That's why "Willie Whopper" is not remembered today except by diehard moles with rare skin diseases who never see daylight. Oh, yeah, Ub's music sucked big time, too. But the prints were razor-sharp. Gotta hand it to the UCLA archive. They rock.
ReplyDeletethe title is a great place to start, too!
ReplyDelete"Gotta hand it to the UCLA archive. They rock."
ReplyDeleteThey certainly do...sorry they offended you by restoring cartoons that you, personally, 'Anonymous'(say--are we related?), don't like. And speaking of folks with rare skin diseases--what were you doing at the Whopper fest, anyway? A hot date drag you there?
: P
Hey Eddie
ReplyDeleteI remember you saying on the Audio Commentary for the Chuck Jones cartoon "Claws For Alarm" That when you do a gag filled cartoon make sure it dose not have a theme. That makes sence. You really do need a much looser story for a gag filled cartoon. When I draw cartoons I usally draw a comic strip of a gag and then I save it for a story I might come up with in the future. Tex Avery & Bob Clampett were the masters for gag cartoons.
your pal,
Jesse Oliver
Jesse: I did say that you don't need a theme and I meant it, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I guess what I meant to say is that no-theme is a valid option if you're good enough at rhythm and pacing to be able to pull it off.
ReplyDeleteEddie
is that top drawing another one by wally wood? the last one you posted was awesome. For this cartoon i have been working on (on and off) i was considering doing some sort of intro, but after reading this, i think i may just cut to the good stuff instead of boring my audience with a possibly unecessary preliminary scene. great advice as always! i wish making cartoons didn't take so long so i could experiment more. hahahh
ReplyDeleteGemmill, are you talking about that Loofer thing?
ReplyDeleteThat top drawing is indeed by Wallace Wood! : D
ReplyDelete