Blog 1: Communication in Animation

Especially when looking at 2-D animation, communication played a huge role in its infancy and still does today. When Disney was first starting, communicating with the audience was the key factor. The audience had to be engaged the whole time and they had to care. Caring seemed to be the biggest issue animators had - characters up to that point had been one-dimensional and uninteresting beyond singular tropes.

As stated by Walt Disney, "At first the cartoon medium was just a novelty, but it never really began to hit until we had more than tricks... until we developed personalities. We had to get beyond getting a laugh. They may roll in the aisles, but that doesn't mean you have a great picture. You have to have pathos in the thing."

Indeed, many of the characters people fell in the love with (Dopey from "Snow White," Jiminy Cricket from "Pinocchio") were loved because of the emotional level they produced in the audience. 

Learning how to communicate, however, has never been just about pathos. The animation itself has to work; it has to give the illusion of life. Animators would later come up with the 12 principles of animation to guide animators in their quest to create a character that the audience could connect with, could sympathize or even empathize with. 

Exaggeration, for example, is one of the 12 principles and it plays a huge role in expression - the way audiences are capable of sympathizing for and caring about characters. This technique is used even in more modern films.

By exaggerating the eyes, mouth, ears, even the hair of Pegasus from "Hercules," the audience becomes more aware of his distress and terror. Now, the audience can be sure of what Pegasus is feeling so that they can properly assess whether to sympathize with him.

Communication plays a huge role in connecting with an audience in animation because an animator must create the illusion of life in order for his work to be appreciated and loved the way it should. Without an emotional connection with the characters created by the 12 principles, audiences will leave feeling underwhelmed. Communication is key.