Literature Review 2/4- 'Animation Writing and Development'

'Animation Writing and Development', 2005, By Jean Ann Wright, Focal Press

This book allows the reader, whether student or professional, to go through and understand the art, craft and business of animation, whether it’s from creating original characters and ideas, to learning how to pitch ideas to history of animation to making the reader a better writer.
It also explains ‘Animation comedy and gag writing’ in Chapter 12, and goes through ‘what makes you laugh?’ showing that it is coming from the perspective of the creator and with views from experts. Within the chapter it also talks about how comedy in animation (which is what my question focuses on), is unique from others. It even demonstrates the codes and conventions of creating a comedy script and comedy techniques.

The question is asking us ‘how does animation generate comedy?’ Whilst what we see on the screen on screen is what makes us laugh the most as animation is a very strong visual medium, makes us laugh, so does the script. This book will allow me to cover the view of the animator and scriptwriter as to their mind frame when it comes to developing animation and dialogue in order to generate comedy in the animation. The book goes through comedy techniques and gives a example of how someone may design a story to be funny.

It allows my essay to have a variety of perspectives from the audience and the effect it has on the audience (laughter), to examples of what we actually see in the animation, e.g. visually seeing the slapstick comedy to the mind of the person behind making the animation and the tools (codes and conventions they use in order to create comedy in their animation. I feel that this book will be very useful when I come to writing my essay.