Reference Sheets

Practical Response Storyboards

Courage the Cowardly Dog's Design

This video goes into detail about the design of Courage from Courage the Cowardly Dog and how he is essentially designed to be performed in a manner specific to his character. It was somewhat of an eye-opener, because this video points out how much characterisation is put into his design, and it is a good example of a cartoon character that is designed this way.

It actually indirectly refers to a point made by Eric Goldberg, in his book Character Animation Crash Course. What Eric explains is that in order for a character to have a good performance, they must be convincing, and in order for that to happen the design must take into consideration the size, weight, strength, and shape of the character. With the case of Courage, his face is shaped like a circle and his body is given a simple bean shape. His arms and legs are very minuscule, and on top of that, he usually has worried looking eyes with every expression, except for when he is screaming. The simple shapes of the character make him visually appealing, and the lack of too much detail, the constant expression for his eyes, the smaller details, and very few shapes that build up his body, all really give the audience an idea of how small and helpless he is supposed to be.

 

Before going into detail, I will look over at the character of Courage to see if his design is appropriate to his personalty. Ed Hooks talks about how characters don't have a personality unless they have something to do. This was a point he disputed against the legendary Chuck Jones, who argued that story did not matter to a character, and all that mattered was personality. Ed Hook's, on the other hand, says that without a story for the character, there is no personality. This is true in the case of Courage because after all, Courage is a cute little dog, but he is also a very unlucky dog and is pretty scared of everything, but none of that would matter without a story to back it up. You wouldn't find a star main character like that in a cutesy fairy-tale show either, it would have to be a horror setting, because the humour of the show and the character's personality is all based around his discomfort towards everything around him. You have to ask yourself: "What makes the character happy? Sad? Scared? Angry? What motivates the character?" None of that would matter, unless you can ask the question: "What would the character do if...?"

Ed Hooks uses a character biography, specifically for creature characters, to outline the characters and their story:

Creature Character Analysis:
Physical Attributes?
Defense Mechanisms/Strategies?
Locomotion?
Age?
Life Span?
Diet?
Physical Health?
How does he procreate?
Relatives?
Sense of humour?
Fears?
Goals?
Culture?
Intelligence?
Education?
Relationship to other characters in the story?
Source of income?
Name?

Courage is a young dog that was adopted by Muriel as a puppy, after being left abandoned, following an incident with his parents. After that experience he began to fear everything, but when it comes to the safety of Muriel, he is able to face his fears to rescue her. Even though Eustace, Courage's secondary owner, is cruel to him, Courage is not afraid of him, and even comes to him for help in certain instances. Though he does dislike Eustace a lot, that does not stop Courage from coming to his rescue. He is a soft little dog, with pale pink fur and brown spots. He has a huge mouth from screaming a lot, and his eyes are big oval shapes that stretch the more frightened he gets. He also has tiny arms and legs, because he is weak. They are also rather floaty because the ability to move moves those tiny limbs, the arms more so than the legs since they are used a lot more, anywhere around the body gives his body language more flexibility, and over-the-top expressions. The simple shapes that build up Courage make this logic more convincing.

With just these characteristics, though, I can see how this leads to his design and how they attribute that with his performance. Courage was designed to be light-weighted, because that's how we relate to him being scared, since everything else is big and threatening to him. The tiny arms suggest a lack of strength but the threadlike structure of them, and, as the video above points out, the fact that they are not attached to one spot, they tend to hover all around the main body, lets them move flexibly, still allowing for more dynamic poses. Courage also has a large mouth and big eyes, simply because his facial expressions are more stylised, more exaggerated, and this makes his moments of pure terror all the more comedic. His eyes are designed so that the more white space there is around his pupils, the more terror they convey; this is so his fear can be exaggerated by making his eyes grow bigger, the more scared he is, while his pupils stay the same size. His mouth is large, because it exaggerates his pose when he screams, and because of the empty space on his main body, and the wispy nature of his arms, he can exaggerate how wide his mouth opens without the issue of his arms, legs, and other features ruining the pose.

With Ed Hook's point combined with Eric Goldberg's, it is clear how Courage is designed to be characterised, while making his personality convincing to the audience.

Tom & Jerry Movies and Reboots: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975)

In 1975, Hanna and Barbera rebooted Tom and Jerry in the form of a Saturday morning cartoon, simply called The Tom and Jerry Show and also known as The New Tom & Jerry Show. They were given a more Laurel & Hardy-esque dynamic, working as a pair rather than rivals. While this could have worked, it still did not make sense to make them into friends, as it worked against the theme of cats chasing after mice. They could have easily used human characters in this series and it would not have changed as much.

This was made during the era in which Hanna Barbera were mainly made cartoons cheaply, which was an efficient way to create cartoons for television that would air in a schedule. It was a good way of incorporating both the enclosed nature of a sitcom and the imagination of a cartoon. This worked with shows like The Flinstones, The Jetsons, and Top Cat, however with Tom and Jerry it felt very inaproptiate. The characters were still silent, which, in the case of this reboot, really did not help much. It was only a short-lived series, but it is relevent in the context of my research, because it highlights another major feature within the Tom and Jerry shorts. The animation was a huge part of what made Tom and Jerry so effective.

I mentioned this when I talked about Tom and Jerry the Movie, but a major element to Tom and Jerry's quality was the animation of the characters. The characters' emotions and personalities were portrayed very well by their animation without the use of dialogue. And this is the problem with the series. This style of animation simply does not suit characters that are mostly silent. The stronger elements of Tom and Jerry was that there was so much dedication to their performances, and they felt like real 3-dimensional beings, so their emotions, actions, and were more realistic as a result. Whereas this series suffers due to the cheap quality of the animation, that is only really suitable for characters that can talk. The animation feels flat, and the performances stiff. This is not the kind of animation that should be used for silent characters. They lack the charisma and the energy needed to engage with the characters, so the illusion that they are simply drawings is not broken. Unlike Tom and Jerry the Movie, giving them a voice would probably be more beneficial.

Tom & Jerry Movies and Reboots: Tom and Jerry the Movie

Tom and Jerry are the most famous comedic duo of all time, having a strong and faithful following to the point in which they are constantly being rebooted in multiple ways. None of which have managed to live up to the original series of short films by Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera. I'm going to explain why these shorts worked by comparing them to Tom & Jerry the Movie (1993) and the short-lived The Tom & Jerry Show (1975).

Tom & Jerry the Movie, tried something new with the characters, at an attempt to fit the characters in a feature-length narrative. They were given full dialogue, musical numbers, a more complicated story, and even a less dysfunctional dynamic. This backfires, unfortunately, as it completely misses what was entirely the point of the original shorts, as well as having a bizarrely complex story surrounding an orphan child who is somehow worth a lot of money to her caretakers. On top of that, there were surprisingly a lot of antagonists in this film, too many in fact. The story simply felt too convoluted, and just as as a Tom & Jerry story. There actually was not a lot of focus on the two main characters either, which is ironic considering they were given voices throughout the film, so it would surely be more logical that they would be the main focus. This would still be a problem because Tom and Jerry are funnier when they speak very few times and are primarily chasing each other. In this film, even dialogue is not funny. As far as their relationship went, there were truces occasionally, but they had a strong enough and relatable dynamic that it always felt appropriate.

The clear theme they were establishing originally was that Tom is a cat and cats eat mice, so Jerry tries to protect himself, so the fact that the characters are silent and are always fighting is what makes them entertaining. There is a line in this very movie, spoken by Tom, that sums up what my point is about: "A cat... and a mouse... friends? That's disgusting!". This would not be as much of an issue either if there was not an easily exploitable story set up during the opening sequence. The entire opening sequence was actually much stronger than the rest of the film, because there was no dialogue and but it was still easy to know what was going on. The only issues so far was the rather unfunny scream Tom had (which was reused a lot throughout the film) and the rather clean but passable slapstick. Apart from that, there was quite a clear distinction between that and the rest of the film, being that it was more focused on actions than words. What really ruins the film is that this sequence had a perfectly acceptable set-up for a story that would effectively put Tom and Jerry in a feature-length film without the need to use full voice-acting. Their owners are moving house but Tom and Jerry get abandoned, left wander around with each other. There could have been a film about them trying to find their owners again so that they can live safely in their new home. There are a lot of comedic opportunities with a story like that, and it's not too complicated that they can't possibly tell this story without dialogue. Instead that story, as well as Tom and Jerry themselves, was abandoned in favour of some story about an orphan, that did not even work as a stand-alone film.

Another issue with this film, is that the animation and sound design was very poorly done. The voices, even during the musical sequences, do not always sync up with their lips, and at times their lips do not even move while the characters talk. The performances were bland and jankey. Very little squash-and-stretch was used, as well as a lack of exagerration. There are also a lot of instances where there was less sound than needed. When Tom and Jerry's house collapsed at the beginning, for instance, it sounded more like a few crumbling stones than an entire house collapsing. There are even moments during the slapstick scenes where very little emphasis was made on the impact of the action. These were all elements that made Tom & Jerry so effective in the first place. The performances were a lot stronger because of their ability to exaggerate and time their reactions well. The sound effects and solid drawings left a stronger impact too. Tom's famous scream was funny because he never spoke, so they also left an impact. There was simply no point in making Tom scream as loudly in the movie because he spoke so much there was less of an impact.

I believe this movie further emphasises why the Tom & Jerry shorts work so effectively. Their performances are much more bland in the movie when given speech and a bigger story. In the past, their much simpler stories were more entertaining because they still focused on their destructive dynamics and well-portrayed slapstick.

Analysis on Silence: Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton is possibly the most notorious silent comedian, known best for his incredible, life-threatening stunts and being one of the first deadpan film comics (earning him the title of "stone-face"). As a stunt man, having a background in circus acrobatics, he always relied on real danger to make the jokes authentic. His athleticity would always allow him to really chew the scenery, and it was always really funny and well-timed when he would get out of really tight situations very intricately and in a fast paced manner. The level of exagerration in his performance tends to vary, even during his stunts; an example of that is his most famous stunt in Steamboat Bill Jr. in which part of a building collapses around him, with him just standing casually in the spot where a gap would be.

Fun fact: you can actually see his arm getting hit by the window frame.

It's very a iconic stunt for a number of reasons. Firstly, how the shot is composited leads the viewer to think that the wall will land directly onto him, and they expect that to happen because of it. Secondly, the pacing of the shot is done so that the audience feels a very sudden bit of tension to surprise. The wall's slow start up up to its eventual hit to the ground has that very subtle bit of tension that makes final moment that much more surprising. Furthermore, since that's a real wall collapsing, it adds to the authenticity, and the tension more real because of it. The humour part of it comes from the overall surrealism of it, that a seemingly well-constructed house would have a wall that breaks off so neatly like a slice of bread is such a mix of surrealism and misfortune for the lead that it maintains a comedic atomosphere. If the building had collapsed into a pile of bricks behind for instance then it would not have been nearly as humourous, and if it was a fake wall with not as much weight to it then there would be no tension. Most significant of all is Buster Keaton's performance here, which he plays very calmly, not even flinching or showing any kind of concern for what is happening around him (which is very daring even for a professional stuntman), until after he survives his near death experience, where he would then respond to it. Overall, this one moment is a spectacle of a performance, and represents pretty much everything that goes into a Buster Keaton stunt. It looks surreal and plays with our expectations.

It actually parallels this common gag, and many other slapstick moments from Looney Tunes. A combination of surrealism and misfortune that plays with audience's expectations. The audience expects the character to fall off the cliff as soon as they are far off the edge, but instead they hover in the air first and assess the situation only to finally fall to the ground. Much like a Buster Keaton stunt, the gag varies, where sometimes a character will actually manage to save themselves or they'll hold the pose in the air for a longer time. There may not be a direct influence here but the jokes are very similar in nature, and the way Keaton performs his stunts could be seen as just as "toony".

Analysis on Silence: Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd isn't as well known, nowadays, to the general public as the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, however he is groundbreaking, both for his stunts but also for his groundbreaking approach towards slapstick humour. The look that is most synonymous with Harold Lloyd is his hat and glasses. His youthful look and natural ability to express very exaggerated facial expressions, as well as his very energetic and flexible body movements, all contribute to his acting style. His films would also incorporate romance and love interests into his stories, often leading to comedic antics that involve him acting awkward around women, one of the first of this kind of storytelling and done more effectively then than ever more. His stunts were very influential, inspiring famous stunt men Vic Armstrong and Jackie Chan. They were often life-threatening, especially due to his thumb and forefinger on his right hand being severed, and needing to disguise the wound with a prosthetic glove, due to an accident on set in which a real bomb was mixed up with some fake ones.

He is best known for his performance in Safety Last!, in which he scales a tall building and hangs from a clock, one of the famous images in film history. It was a well-coordinated sequence that used strong tension as the basis for its humour, in which several circumstances lead to him nearly falling. It was also very ingeniously built up throughout the film, as it happens due to him the idea to his boss that a stuntman he knows will climb the building, and draw in a mass audience to his shop. He does this because it mean getting paid a fortune, thus not disappointing his girlfriend who visits unexpectedly and expected him to be successful after moving into the bug city. This idea backfires when Lloyd's stuntman has a run in with a police officer who has a grudge against him because of an earlier scene in the film. They decide the best idea would be for Lloyd to climb the building himself then once the stuntman loses the cop they swap clothes and the stuntman climb the rest of the way to the top; a lot of circumstances lead to Lloyd having to climb to the top of the building. This scene works because even if we know Harold Lloyd is skilled at climbing buildings and being a stuntman, the character he plays is just a dorky guy that is a constant victim of circumstance and bad luck within the context of the film, and Harold Lloyd does such a great job at portraying this character that the audience relates to his struggle climbing the building, and therefore sees the humour behind it.