The purpose of the animated cartoon being to amuse, the experienced animator makes it his aim to get, as the saying goes in the trade, a laugh in every foot of film. The animated cartoon is allied in its kind to an extravagant farce or a lively comedy of the spoken stage.

Although strongly limned character and that there be something moving all the time seem to be the two important ingredients of a film of this type, it is not to be forgotten that plot is an essential in the work.

Naturally, a scenario, or skeletonized plan of the story, is written out first. The full details of the action and business, from the beginning to the very end, are not worked out as they are in a manuscript for a stage play. It is simply that some sort of a framework, on which to build the story, is first required.

In the early days of the art a film with a string of incidents only, but with plenty of movement in the animated figures, would find a ready market and an appreciative audience. At the present time not only must the pictorial properties be well rendered imageries of nature but the story must be artistic in form. This signifies that the idea of plot, and all its attendant concomitants, should be present. The usual requirements of a dramatic story are now sought for in an animated cartoon. The plot must be the orderly establishment of parts leading up to some main point, or the working to a climax and a subsequent untangling of it all.

If the artist does write the first sketch of the play himself, he at least will elaborate it and add various bits of dramatic business. This is all very well if he understands and knows what he is about, but if, on the other hand, he has not the dramatic idea, his additions are quite likely to confuse the story.

Whether a film is for the purpose of amusement or to educate, the plan should show that the attainment of something is being striven for. In an educational film this is brought about by an adherence to pedagogical principles. If it is a comic story, due regard must be paid to dramatic construction.

It is obvious that if a humorous scenario has but two characters this will simplify the telling, and the idea of their antagonisms, obstacles, and embarrassing difficulties are easily told. The clash and the struggle between the two can be expressed in many simple ways, the story carried on, curiosity stimulated, and an expectant feeling engendered as to what will happen. The final episode is apt to be some calamitous fall with the whole picture area perhaps filled with a graphic representation of an explosion, to be followed by an after-climax, when the smoke has cleared away, of the victim rubbing his head.

To be sure, an animated cartoon needs a good many more incidents than one calamitous occurrence. It is indispensable, for the sake of an uninterrupted animation, that it should have a succession of distressing mishaps, growing in violence. This idea of a cumulative chain of actions, increasing in force and resultant misfortune, is peculiarly adapted to animated drawings.

The animator, if he is a good draftsman, can manage his little picture people much easier than the theatrical manager does the members of his company. A great danger, nevertheless, is that the animator, with this facility of doing whatever he pleases with his characters, may overdo the matter. He must be careful that he does not create too much business for his actors, and so retard the sequence of those episodes proper to the plot.

The very best type of animated cartoon tells the story from the very first incidents and throughout its whole continuance to the crisis, and the ending by pantomimic acting only. This means that there is no dialogue lettered on the drawings themselves. Symbolical signs, like exclamation-marks, sound-suggesting letters, or the like, are naturally proper and happy additions to drawings; but as little dialogue as possible should be used in drawings. They break the continuity of the animation, for one thing. Although it is true that balloons with their wording make an easy way for the animator to have the automatic counter register “footage” (a consideration appealing to the business sense of the artist), it is only when there is a good jest brought out that lettering on the drawings themselves can be forgiven.

In the early period of the development of animated comic drawings, not even subtitles were interspersed throughout a film. The entire story was told by pantomime. Nowadays it is becoming the fashion to use subtitles, and have them to introduce incidentals, mark a change of scene, or bring in a witty remark. Wording brought into a cartoon film this way is often felicitous and technically legitimate. But dialogue, as has been stated, should be kept out of the drawings themselves, not only for the sake of artistic form, but for commercial reasons. (Films intended for exportation to countries where English is not spoken are much more valuable if they are without lettering in the pictorial parts. With all wording on separate titles, it is very easy to change them and have them joined to the film proper.)

The above statement with its frank allusion to a matter of business seems to be getting away from our subject; but it is not, as it calls to our attention the principal quality of a comic screen drawing—namely, pantomime—and it emphasizes, too, the universality of pantomime. An animated cartoon clever in gesturing is understood by all races.

It is to be remembered that pantomime is a matter of interpretation, both on the stage by an actor and by the artist when he essays to represent it pictorially. If it were an actual copying of nature, it only would be as interesting as a normal photograph; and that is not very interesting. As in all interpretative arts there is a slight betrayal of the mechanical means, or processes, so in pantomime there is a suggestion of the mechanistic. Let us recall the rhythmical and toy-like movements of the actors whom we have seen playing in some whimsical dumb show.

How often do the clowns pretend in their foolery that they are automatons, or that they can move only by mechanistic motions. They find need, too, in their ludicrous acting, for mechanical properties—slap sticks, absurd objects, or toys.

It is very certain that there are some forms of motion productive of laughter that do not imitate actions natural to the human organism, but seem to acquire their power of risibility from their resemblance to mechanical motion. This is on the order of the notion that Bergson has elaborated upon in his treatise in explanation of the comic. He states, in substance, as one law of the ludicrous, that the human body appears laughable when its movements give a similitude of a machine in operation. There is no question of the correctness of this view as a matter of mere exterior observation. Rather it seems to us that machine-like movements in organic bodies amuse us because of the rhythmic, orderly, or periodic occurrences of these movements in themselves, and not to any matter of comparison.

In a boisterous low comedy it is always incumbent upon the victim of a blow to reel around like a top before he falls. It never fails to bring laughter. An effect like this is easy to produce in animated cartoons. There is no need to consider physiological impossibilities of the human organism, the artist can make his characters spin as much as he pleases.

In a screen picture two boys will be seen fighting; at first they will parry a few blows, then suddenly begin to whirl around so that nothing is visible but a confused mass and an occasional detail like an arm or leg. It will be exactly like a revolving pinwheel. This is made on the film by having a drawing representing the boys as clinched and turning it around as if it were a pinwheel.

In a panorama screen effect it seems to be sufficiently realistic, for laughter purposes, to have the legs and arms of the individual in a hurry give a blurred impression, in some degree, like that of the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel.

It is an indisputable fact that the human mind finds fascination in any movement resembling a rotary one. Witness the interest that a novel mechanism or an automatic toy creates in a shop-window. Such interest is still further stimulated if there is an added item of anything of the human, or something definite accomplished in the operations.

We require, it seems, if we are really alive, not occasional, but constant, stimuli of some sort. When we become weary of toil—which in itself is often an unwelcome and imposed form of stimulus—we seek stimuli in recreation. Or if we haven’t energy enough for the self-stimulation of sports, or the like activity, we look for it outside of ourselves.

Perhaps it is music, exciting us metronomically; or a play where our emotions are agitated—rhythmically or in dissonance; maybe it is a circus or the music-hall, where color and sound vibrations stimulate us. Everywhere it will be some form of measured time, movement, or rotation, whether the theme be comic or serious.

Idlers will stop to gaze at a machine in motion where there is building going on, or they will stop to peer into the windows of a busy factory. There is something in all this that shows that the human mind craves the periodicity of stimulation.

Perhaps one of the reasons why those crudely executed white on black animated cartoons—alluded to in a preceding chapter—are so laugh-provoking is that they represent the characters performing their antics more or less mechanically. A windmill effect, a twirling, a spinning, and a merry-go-round movement are of striking import in animated cartoons. They never fail to cause laughter when depicted in some such fashion or other.

Sometimes in a pursuit in a comic picture there is an introduction of a chase around a house or around a tree. The gyration about the house is particularly productive of laughter. The slight interruption while the figure passes back of the house gives occasion for the necessary pause in this comic business.

The author recalls a film of real people and scenes that exemplified the potency of a mechanical turning and the value of a pause for laugh-provoking purposes. The scene represented a tiny bungalow that was blown from its foundation by the force of the storm and made to revolve as if it were pivoted in the centre. The droll character of the play saved himself from being blown away by clinging to one corner of the porch. The laughter of the audience although continuous came in waves of different strength. The twirling house itself caused laughter, but it increased when the ludicrous figure clinging to the porch came into view, and it decreased when he disappeared while he was being twirled around the far side of the house.

Possibly one of the reasons why this performance was so successful was because this movement allowed for the physiological necessity of a rest on the part of the spectators. The emotional excitement would have been fatiguing to the breaking point had the incitement to laughter been continuous. The humorous proceeding operated so that any individual member of the audience was not compelled to shake or be agitated by laughter all the time, but could slacken up and rest rhythmically.

The need of a rhythmic slowing-up, or pause, to allow for a respite for the emotions and the convulsed physical organism is well illustrated in the following incident often introduced into animated scenes. A little figure is observed running up hill and down dale. The manner of his performance is like this: he runs up the first hill and disappears; there is a moment or so when the scene is empty and during which he is supposed to be running down the far side of the hill. Soon he is discovered running up the second hill, at the top of which he again disappears for a time to run down its far side. In another moment he is scrambling up the next hill and down the other side again. This continues until he is lost as a tiny black spot near the horizon.

This disjointed hill-climbing causes hilarious laughter and, as in the case cited above, comes in waves. The rise and fall of the laughter waves can be distinguished as the little figure runs up the hills and down the valleys.

A pause is a necessary element in any continued comic situation. It is, in fact, proper to any series intended to arouse the emotion of laughter. And in some respects a pause corresponds to the negative moment of flexion—adverting our thoughts for a moment to physical activity—while the outburst of laughter corresponds to the positivity of extension.

A bit of striking animation is that of having a continuous stream of individuals pouring out of a building, or a procession of funny animals coming out of a receptacle from which we did not expect such a parade. These episodes of movement do resemble a parade—a species of regularly recurring stimulation.

The psychological questions in regard to these effects is related certainly to the matter of the delight of the human mind in a stirring up by repetition. Undoubtedly the same liking or pleasure in these little bits of screen animation bear a resemblance to the delight experienced in watching a parade. What is there in a spectacle of this sort that tickles our senses? Is it the regularness of the step-keeping, the hypnotic music of the band, or the show of varied uniforms? Perhaps the principles of unity and variety—two essentials of any art work—enter into the matter. The variety in the uniforms of the different sections satisfies the eye, and the unity of the marching pleases the mind.

Keeping step is an artificial recurrence of movement. It pleases, of course, but when this motion is rendered strongly mechanistic it takes on immediately an element of the comic. In some of the little figures drolly drawn by Bab (W. S. Gilbert, of “Pinafore” and “Mikado” fame), this is well expressed. A little picture of his, for instance, shows three tiny men stepping out like mechanically operated toys.

One of the most primitive of practical jokes is that of throwing a stone at a hat on some one’s head. And its most aggravated form as a joke is that in which the hat is of a stovepipe pattern. In a humorous stage play, merely to show an individual with a stone in his hand while a sprucely dressed one wearing a high hat is passing is motive enough to cause laughter. The graphic artist copies this situation by representing a stone in the air nearing the hat. Action lines, as they are called, indicate that the missile is flying through the air. In both of these cases—in reality and in the picture—mere anticipation is enough to awaken the risibilities. The animator, of course, can gratify both the spectator’s joy of anticipation and the mischievous delight of seeing the consummation of the action.

Many professional entertainers have built their reputation on some dramatic business with hats. Either they wear some odd head-gear or else it will be in their manner of wearing a hat or a trick in doffing it. If a hat is too small, it is sure to create laughter; and if too large, it is a certainty that there will be mocking hilarity. And even if it is of the right size, it need only to be perched on the head at an angle to be considered ludicrous.

The spirited screen actors, too, of the animator’s pencil are shown going through all sorts of strange doings with their hats.