Animation

Drawing On Your Own Words:
Animation Essentials

By Vern Smith

Live-action and animation writer Ian James Corlett has broken one of the writing rules he used to hold dear. Once shying away from autobiographical material, he’s now riding the success of Being Ian, the top animated Canadian show on YTV.

"This is really autobiographical," says Corlett. "All the characters in my family are the real characters, except their names are different.

"When I came up with the idea, it went against everything I believed in. I didn’t feel comfortable making a show about me for obvious reasons. But in fact it does seem to work."

So it gets tricky to ask Corlett about his rules for writing animation. But, having served as a staff writer with the likes of Disney, Nelvana, and Fox Kids, while also working on Canadian shows such as Beastwars, Dragon Tales, and The Adventures of Paddington Bear, he does have opinions.

"Writing for animation, you have to do a lot more description, because every production is so different," he says. "Some are done and story-boarded overseas, so sometimes you will have a production that requires a lot of description. Sometimes you need to use simplified English. Something we might take for granted here, you have to kind of give just a little more explanation, because things aren’t necessarily obvious."

In one instance, Corlett used the word "noggin" in an early draft. Upon sober second thought–and before it came back from overseas with the query "What is a noggin?"–he decided he’d better just use "head." "That’s more of a concern in animation than in live-action," he says. "The other thing is that you need to describe where these places are. You have to be alittle more nuts and bolts, especially if something is being animated overseas. Even here, people appreciate [clarity] because it’s got to get from your head onto a drawing pad."

Translating the language barrier

Thinking through all the details requires patience–even more so when you’re working with another language. Writing partners Daniel Williams and Lienne Sawatsky worked on both the live-action series 11 Somerset and the animated Kid Paddle. Original scripts were written in French, and it was then up to Sawatsky and Williams to write English versions, in advance of simultaneous shoots. (They did a few original English scripts for Kid Paddle too.)

"Especially when you’re working with a show that doesn’t have any voice yet… you try to make it as close as you can," Williams says. "But because you have a new language, characters do end up being different. So, you sort of give your characters new character within the translation."

Sawatsky, who’s most recent credit with Williams is the animated action series Delilah & Julius, says they look at the story first–the broad story. But, she says, agreeing with Williams, language is always going to change the characters. "Translation is sort of a sticky thing because French characters are going to be a lot different than English characters. We have to find a common ground, and that’s our job. We’re not actually translators, we’re writers.

"We don’t think of it as translation word for word. We take the story and think of it like any other story. Of course you have more depth, but you also have more limitations. You have the same number of lines and you stay true to the story so it’s sort of like taking it and spinning it into a parallel universe. It has to fit the confines, but we do try to make it our own."

As for the differences between animation and live action, Sawatsky says it’s all about constraints. In animation, budget provided, a writer can go back 400,000 years. But that doesn’t mean the animation writer gets a free pass when it comes to dreaming up endless settings. Pile on the new sets and characters, and things can start to get expensive.

"It does cost a lot of money designing new places and characters so there are some limitations," notes Williams, whose live-action feature The Hamster Cage did festivals in Montreal and Vancouver this past fall.

Nevertheless, animation does offer a lot more imaginative freedom when it comes to the visuals than your typical live indie production. "You have to write animation that’s highly visual and not dependent on small detail. That’s the big difference. In animation, you can’t rely on the look of an actor to get your point across."

Living in the physical world

Cheryl Wagner is a writer and the creative producer for Poko, which she also helped develop. It’s a pre-school animated series, but it’s also stop-motion, which presents a whole new set of concerns and constraints.

"You’re really so dealing in a physical world," Wagner says. "When Jeff [Rosen] and I dreamt up Poko, we thought we’d created this sweet little show with a boy, a dog, and a clunky set."

The format has some very real limitations when it comes to what can be filmed.

"It’s so slow to do because you have to have replications of all the props and everything," Wagner says. "It’s not like other animation where you can sort of dream up sets. It limits the world you’re in. You’ve got to stick to where you are. You’re not, as a writer, going to say, ‘Oh, let’s suddenly have him go in the bathroom.’

"The other thing that’s really true about the physicality is that you really have to know the limitations of every puppet."

That’s particularly true of the name character, who was originally designed "to have a very toddler sort of scale body." A child just shy of four, he has a comparatively large cranium and short legs. Poor thing, he can’t reach up over his head either–just like Charlie Brown–and a writer just has to keep that in mind.

The second season sees the introduction of a slightly older female character, Bibi. And she can do everything a little better, which is also something a writer needs to mind.

"She’s a little girl who’s older and has wonderful long legs, who can twirl and jump and do all kinds of physical things," Wagner says. "So I think it’s really important during the writing to have a real sense of what the puppet can and cannot do."

In other words, every time Poko’s off the ground it’s going to require rigs, which takes longer.

"It’s a beautiful show," Wagner says, "but it’s a huge endeavour." The puppets’ physical limitations include their ability to speak–and keeping the language simple, can’t hurt the overseas sales either. "It was all that more important that the language issues were limited if we were going to have words spoken through stop-motion. When Poko says his magic word–‘Poko-pippity-pop’–the animator is putting different shaped mouths on his face to make that word."

It’s very different, Wagner says, than writing for cel animation, where she could put more emphasis on movement. "You have to be very concise with the movement you dream up in stop-motion because if you’ve got some real wonderful slapstick tumbles and goofy moves, you’re only going to have so much of that per adventure."

See the Fall/Winter 2006 issue of Canadian Screenwriter for the complete article.