Story: Writing Cartoons Pt 3- Structure

This post is the third in a series on Cartoon Writing. For the first two installments, see... Writing Cartoons: Part One- The Gag Session and Part Two- A Continuity Emerges


When we left off in our series of posts on cartoon writing last time, the initial "No No Session" had generated a pile of unrelated thumbnail gags on a basic premise which were starting to lead to the beginnings of a rudimentary plotline. Today, we'll explore how the cartoon writers brought structure to the story and began to flesh out the continuity in preparation for the storyboard artist to begin work.

In the mid-1930s, the notes from Disney story sessions were widely distributed among the staff. All of the employees, from the directors all the way down to the janitors, were invited to submit gags to the cartoon being developed. The only stipulation was that the gags had to be drawn- not written down. Walt and the story men sifted through the doodles and stick figure drawings to find inspiration for little bits of business that they might not have thought of themselves. If the gag was usable, the employee was given a dollar bonus. If the gag led to a sequence of gags, they were paid five dollars. Here's a typical "dollar gag" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...


In an interview many years later, Ward Kimball recalled that he would supplement his income by generating "dollar gags" in his spare time... His ideas were almost always used, but he soon discovered that he could get five times as much by simply attaching a "butt joke" to the end as a payoff. Inevitably, the "fanny gag" would appeal to Walt's unique sense of humor, and he would choose Kimball's gag as one that might lead to a sequence of gags- Bam! Five bucks!

Kimball wasn't the only artist who knew Walt's preferences when it came to gag ideas... Here is a short sequence of story doodles by Les Clark. This "butt joke" was created for a sequence that was eventually cut from Mickey's Grand Opera (1936)...


Clark is beginning to see an individual gag as a series of actions that relate to each other. His thumbnail sketches suggest enough for a storyboard artist to begin to tighten up his poses, focus the action and define the staging.

THE OUTLINE
As soon as the gags started to come into focus as a basic plotline, the story supervisor would begin arranging them into a logical progression, formatting the embryonic scenario as a written document in outline form. The outline was the equivalent of the "first draft script" for an animated film. But it didn't include dialogue and descriptions of actions the way live action scripts do. Instead, it defined the structure, continuity and intent of the action.

STRUCTURE

In preparing the notes for the storyboard artist to work from, the story supervisor began by establishing a structure to the gags. It was important to clearly define how the story broke down into sequences and how each sequence broke down into individual gags, because the storyboard artist most likely would not be boarding it in chronological order. The artist often drew up the payoffs to the storyline first- it was easier to create a strong setup when he knew where he was going to end up. The outline helped determine the breaks in the story, so the artist could work in an order that made sense for him.

Here we have an outline from Altruists prepared by Ren & Stimpy story man, Richard Pursel. John Kricfalusi's director's notes and doodles for the main setups appear in the margins...


Notice that the document begins with the statement of the premise, and is broken into sections defining the beginning, middle and end, as well as the sequences which fall within those sections. The structural detail goes all the way down to individual gags.


The line breaks make it easy for the storyboard artist to cut up the outline with scissors and pin the individual story beats up on his cork board as a placeholder for action he hadn't boarded yet.

John K recently shared this outline for Stimpy's Invention on his blog, All Kinds Of Stuff...




Read John K's detailed explanation of this outline.
CONTINUITY

The second element that the outline defined was the continuity- the basic flow and logical order of the action. The storyboard artist would receive the doodles from the "No No Session" to work from, so there was no need for detailed descriptions of action. As the old saying goes... "A picture is worth a thousand words" and nowhere was that adage any truer than in cartoon writing. Story artists were accustomed to working from thumbnail sketches, and they could extrapolate the essense of a gag better from a quick sketch than a whole script full of fancy prose.

Here we have an outline for The Return Of Duck Dodgers In The 24 1/2 Century by Mike Maltese, one of the greatest cartoon writers who ever lived. Although this document is from very late in Maltese's career, it clearly shows his creative process. This particular draft is a transitional document. Maltese had already begun boarding when this document was drafted. The first eight sequences and sequences 18, 19 and 20 appear to include dialogue transcribed from the board. The middle section, however is in raw outline form, with very basic descriptions only intended to remind him of which thumbnail gag drawing went where in the continuity. As the storyboard developed, these notes would be updated with dialogue, transforming the outline from being a structural document to being a dialogue script, ready for the voice actors to perform.





If one looked at notes like these out of context, without the knowledge of the visual devolopment that preceded it and the purpose this document serves to the steps that follow, one might mistakenly assume that the story is being written in words. But nothing could be further from the truth. The words merely serve to organize the drawings. The storytelling is all being devised visually.

INTENT

The third, and perhaps most important thing that a storyboard artist required from the notes prepared by the story supervisor was the intent of the action. The cartoon had a purpose, which was stated in the premise. The beginning, middle and end of the story all had purposes as well. If an event in the beginning set up a payoff later in the story, the storyboard artist would need to be made aware of that.

The stories for cartoon short subjects generally broke down into a beginning, (which first established the characters and then the situation they found themselves in) variations on the theme of the premise in the middle of the cartoon, (referred to at Warner Bros as "blackouts") and the "topper gag" and resolution to the situation which formed the end. Every individual gag had to serve the purposes of the sequence it was a part of- all of the parts worked together to tell the story.

In our next installment on cartoon writing, the stage has been set for the storyboard artist to begin blocking out the action and establishing the cinematics...


You won't want to miss the amazing examples of thumbnail boards that I've unearthed in the collection of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive!

A SIDE NOTE: I've recommended it before, but if you haven't seen the DVD of The Unknown Chaplin, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. The process of writing for animated cartoons grew out of the way slapstick comedy shorts were written. In fact, several animators and cartoonists served as gag writers for famous comedians in their younger days. This DVD breaks down Chaplin's creative process and shows you exactly how his films were written. The program that deals with Chaplin's masterpiece, City Lights should be required viewing for storyboard students at every animation school.

For more on cartoon writing see... Writing Cartoons: Part One- The Gag Session and Part Two- A Continuity Emerges

See also... The Greatest Cartoon Writer of All Time, Alvin Show Pilot Board, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard, Clair Weeks' Banyan Deer Storyboard, Louise Zingarelli's Cool World Board, Ren & Stimpy Big House Blues Board Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Stimpy's Invention Board Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Story: Writing Cartoons Pt 2- A Continuity Emerges

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.


When I was beginning to draft this series of articles, I remembered a folder of thumbnails that Grim Natwick's family gave me. The folder was labelled "Valiant Tailor Gags". I thumbed through the drawings several times over the years, but I only looked at the drawings individually- I didn't look at them as a group. I pulled the folder out this week and upon closer examination, I discovered that the drawings formed a clear record of a gag session from 1934. This set of sketches is particularly important because it shows how the gags were created, how they evolved and grew as the artists discussed them at the story meeting, and how they found their way into the continuity of a finished cartoon.


The basic premise of this sequence is... The King is being chased by bees. He dives into a lake to escape them. The Giant arrives and harasses the King. The Tailor defeats the Giant and saves the King. Grim Natwick directed this cartoon, and his notes appear on the drawings in red. A check mark indicates that the gag is approved for the film. A question mark indicates that he isn't sure where to use it yet.

Here are some of the gags that the staff of the Iwerks Studio came up with for this premise. At the end is a Quicktime movie of the complete cartoon, so you can see how these plans were realized in the finished film.


William Hamner suggests a gag where the King is swallowed by a whale and is shot out his blow hole. (Since the character design hadn't been established yet, Hamner draws the character as Otto Soglow's Little King!)


An artist named Hudson elaborates on Hamner's basic idea, adding a tail flip to the end.


This gag suggests that the King be underwater, hiding from the Giant. The Giant tries to catch him like a fish with a gold watch as bait.


Underwater, the King uses a looking glass as a teeter totter.


The Giant blows on the water and a passing octopus offers him Listerine.


Ed Friedman suggests a gag where the Giant breaks a limb off a tree and uses it as a boomerang.


Another variant on the broken tree branch- The Giant uses it as a straw to drink the lake dry.


Several unrelated gags: The King runs out of the lake with streams of water from his crown. / The King is poked in the butt by a sword fish. / The Giant gets honey poured on his head. / The King is stung by bees on the patch on his butt.


The Giant runs from a swarm of bees and stumbles over some wagons.


Grim suggests a gag where the Giant takes a header into the dirt, plowing the ground in a furrow.


He attempts a topper gag with a farmer using the Giant to plow his field.

Now comes the really interesting part! Here are Grim Natwick's thumbnails showing how he takes the random gags and works them into a rough continuity. The drawings are very rough. You might want to print them out so you can compare them to the finished film.


(32) The King enters scene and does a trout dive into the lake to escape the bees. We pan with the soldiers as the pursue the Tailor and chase him up a tree.
(33) The King bobs up and down in the water as the bees circle in a repeating cycle above him.
(34) A thunderous laugh is heard in the distance. The Giant steps over the crest of the hill and takes a few steps over them.
(35) The Giant scares the soldiers away. He looks at the King and laughs. The King ducks.
(36) The Giant blows on the water and throws a stone at the King.
(37) The King reaches up into the tree and grabs a branch. The Tailor jumps to another branch.


(39) The Giant uses the branch like a gaffing hook, reaching to catch the King with it.
(40) The hook at the end of the branch catches in the patch on the King's butt.
(41) The Tailor sees what is happening and ducks into a hole in the tree. The camera pans down the outside of the tree to its base, where the Tailor crawls out of another hole.
(42) The Tailor sneaks past the Giant and runs off screen
(43) Dissolve to: Interior tailor shop. The Tailor grabs a jar of honey.


(44) Exterior Tailor Shop: The Tailor runs down the street with the jar.
(45) Dissolve to: The Tailor diving back into the hole in the tree trunk.
(46) The Tailor, standing on a high limb of the tree, drops the honey jar.
(47) The pot of honey dumps all over the Giant's head.
(48) The King comes to the surface of the water as the bees go after the Giant.
(49) The Giant runs from the bees. He shoves his head in the dirt to escape them. He runs through a barn and a church over the hill and into the distance.

The sequence went from here to the storyboard stage, where the action was defined better and the gags were plussed. Watch the film and see how it came out...


The Valiant Tailor (Iwerks/1934)
(Quicktime 7 / 7 minutes / 18.5 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

The next article in this series will show how the structure of cartoons became more sophisticated in the mid-1930s, and the development of organizational tools that made that possible.

For more on the Iwerks Studio, see... Grim Natwick's Scrapbook: The Golden Age, Berny Wolf: Iwerks Model Sheets, and Grim Natwick's Job Offer From Disney

For more on cartoon writing see... The Greatest Cartoon Writer of All Time, Alvin Show Pilot Board, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard, Clair Weeks' Banyan Deer Storyboard, Louise Zingarelli's Cool World Board, Ren & Stimpy Big House Blues Board Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Stimpy's Invention Board Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Story: Writing Cartoons Pt 1- The Gag Session

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.


Disney Studios
If you're anything like me, you've probably daydreamed about going back in time to be a "fly on the wall" at a golden age cartoon studio. Imagine getting the chance to witness how your favorite cartoons were written and see the twists and turns they took from initial idea to finished story. Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. But we can find out an awful lot about the process used to write classic cartoons by looking at the scraps of paper left behind by the great artists who wrote them. I'm going to do just that in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

The specifics of the process of writing cartoons in the classic era varied a bit from studio to studio and from time period to time period. Like every other part of the production line, there was an evolution as experimentation led to the development of more effective techniques. But the general outline of the progress of a story from raw idea to boards ready to put into production didn't vary all that much. I'm going to show you some specific examples that illustrate these general concepts in the hopes that you might come away with a better understanding of how cartoons were created.


Warner Bros.
THE GAG SESSION
The idea for a cartoon would start with a simple premise- a sentence or two that described the general theme of the cartoon. For example... "Porky is a bullfighter." or "Mickey, Donald and Goofy are ghost exterminators." In the premise there would be no real attempt at describing a plot, just a simple statement of a situation that might offer entertaining possibilities.

Once the premise was chosen, a group of artists would be called together for an initial gag session to come up with ideas. At Warner Bros, this meeting was referred to as a "No No Session", which meant that no one was allowed to say "no" to an idea- any suggestion was fair game. At this stage, the gags were generally isolated variations on the basic theme of the premise, with no attempt to put them into any sort of continuity or plot. The goal was to come up with funny situations that could be expanded upon and reworked into something more specific further down the line.


Terry-Toons
The artists would sit with pads and pencils or lap boards, jotting down notes and doodling up thumbnail sketches of what the ideas might look like. The sketches might be pinned up on a cork board so the other artists could work gags off if it. One person would be responsible for taking notes for the group, so after the meeting was over, the story man could go back and refresh his memory of a specific gag. As the doodles and notes piled up, certain themes would form, gags would lead to follow up gags and build to "topper gags". A continuity would begin to take shape.

EXAMPLES
The notes taken at early story meetings were usually for the artists' own reference, so the sketches were loose and the notes were scribbled down quickly. This makes them quite difficult for the layman to read. A certain amount of deciphering is required. At the bottom of each example, I summarize the contents of the notes. You might want to print them out. It's easier to study them in a hard copy than on the computer screen.

Here are story notes from an unmade Fleischer Screen Song cartoon from the late 1920s. Based on the song, "Mysterious Mose", this premise was shelved and revived a couple of years later as a Betty Boop cartoon.


It appears that a little bit of development had occurred by the time this document was created, but not much. The lyrics are typed out with lots of space for drawing out the action between each line. The character of the piano player is to be in live action, while the moon and the cat are animated. The first page refers to the location of the beginning of the song on the bar sheet and indicates that a scene of the moon on the second page should be moved forward to this page, to allow the cat to be the focus of the shot the second time up.


The notes say that the second shot on this page should be focused on the cat, and he should jump from this scene cut to the next scene for the bouncing ball sequence.


Here we have all the lyrics of the song, and a quick outline of the sorts of gags the artists should come up with for the bouncing ball section of the film. By the end of the meeting, the director would have a stack of gag drawings to choose from. In the early days of animation, the story process was very informal, and the individual animator was often expected to flesh out the specifics of the action in his scenes on his own, co-ordinating with the animator of the preceding and following sequence on the hookup between sequences. Dave Fleischer was known to add gags all the way up to the animation stage.

There aren't a lot of doodles on this next document, which dates back to the Charles Mintz Studio around 1934. Some gags are indicated by just a few terse words. This probably means that these notes were accompanied a pile of drawings, which the story man was trying to order into a basic continuity. The action has been divided into seven segments, each one representing approximately a minute of screen time.


The First Segment shows a circus parade arriving in town. A drum major disappears into his oversized hat; a french horn player pops out of a tuba to take a solo; a team of horses pans through pulling a street sweeper behind, a lion cage is propelled by the lion's own legs- no wheels; and a polar bear drowns in an ice wagon full of melted ice.


In the Second Section the parade continues. A clown in a horse costume sticks his head out the tail and gives the crowd a razzberry; a clown jumps through a paper hoop- but it's actually a Chinese gong; a parade of elephants- each one smaller than the one before- ends with an elephant so tiny, a clown has to use a magnifying glass to see it.

The Third Section includes a giraffe whose neck extends to eat the fake fruit off the hat of a lady in the crowd; a fat lady riding a hippopotamus wagon, and a gorilla who plays the harp on his cage bars, then escapes and kidnaps a girl. He snatches her up to the house tops.


Part Four: The circus performers attempt to rescue the girl. A tightrope walker walks on telegraph lines to reach the ape; a man is shot out of a cannon and the ape socks him in the nose; the ape perches on the top of a building and bees buzz around him like the airplanes buzzing King Kong.

In Part Five, an elephant shoots peanuts at the ape like a machine gun as an organ grinder's monkey dances on the rooftops.


Part Six: The ape scares a flagpole sitter away from his perch and replaces him on the top of the pole. The organ grinder monkey cuts down the pole, gives the ape a big kick in the ass and marches him away.

Part Seven: The ape sees his reflection in a mirror and makes faces. The reflection swats him. The ape, who we expect to act like a he-man, acts like a pansy instead. The parade marches off into the distance as the ape rubs his sore ass from where the monkey kicked him.


In the next installment of this series on Cartoon Writing, I will show you a batch of sketches that document a story session at the Iwerks Studio in 1934. Read it now: Story: Writing Cartoons Pt 2- A Continuity Emerges

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... The Greatest Cartoon Writer of All Time, Alvin Show Pilot Board, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard, Clair Weeks' Banyan Deer Storyboard, Louise Zingarelli's Cool World Board, Ren & Stimpy Big House Blues Board Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Stimpy's Invention Board Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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2007 Review: 8 Writing Cartoons

As the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive completes its second year in operation, it's time to review the accomplishments of the past year. Here's a countdown of the ten most important subjects we've covered in 2007. See if your list matches mine. (View the complete list.) Click on the link to see more on this topic.



NUMBER 8: WRITING CARTOONS

One of the best things to happen to animation in the past few years is the growth of blogging among animation professionals. Topics that used to be discussed only in obscure trade journals or at private symposiums are now discussed publicly on the internet, where participants from all over the world can benefit from the exchange of information.

One of the principle catalysts for discussion on the net is John Kricfalusi's blog, All Kinds of Stuff. A series of John's posts on writing for animation created a wave of comment across the "blogosphere". A prominent cartoon scriptwriter vehemently disagreed with John's opinion that cartoons should be written by cartoonists, not scriptwriters. But when he was asked to name his favorite golden age cartoon writer, the scriptwriter was unable to come up with a single name... This isn't particularly surprising because THERE WERE NO CARTOON SCRIPTWRITERS prior to 1960.

Many people working in animation today have very little idea of how cartoons were made in the first half century of the medium. But Walt Disney was happy to tell you how he wrote his cartoons...


And it was the same at every other golden age animation studio...


Here's the Terry-Toons writers at work...


And a "script" for an MGM Tom & Jerry cartoon...


And a page from the "script" to Max Fleischer's Mr. Bug Goes To Town...


And this fragment of a storyboard from Warner Bros by my pick as the greatest cartoon writer of all time, Warren Foster. Check out the link below for a complete storyboard by Foster from the pilot episode of The Yogi Bear Show.


Story: The Greatest Cartoon Writer Of All Time March 27th, 2007

We've posted other great examples of visual storytelling this year as well...

• Alvin Show Pilot Board September 21st, 2007


• Clair Weeks' "Banyan Deer" Storyboard August 12th, 2007


• Ren & Stimpy "Big House Blues" Sequence 03 January 11th, 2007

After the first of the year, I'll have some more storyboards to post.

Go To Number 7 on the list of Top Ten Subjects of 2007

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Story: The Greatest Cartoon Writer Of All Time

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.



The other day, a discussion on cartoon writing erupted in response to recent posts on the subject in John Kricfalusi's blog. One of John's main points is that the golden age cartoons that we all regard as the greatest cartoons ever created were written by cartoonists as storyboards, not written in words as scripts. In support of his argument, he presented video clips of Walt Disney and Walter Lantz discussing the qualifications of the people who wrote their cartoons. (See also, Page 5 of the 1938 Disney Training Manual).

The scriptwriters dismissed John K's points as old fashioned and irrelevant to the current scene, while expressing respect of a general sort for the classic cartoons of the past. They claimed that it was just a matter of John's personal tastes, not a reflection on the effectiveness of the process itself. They never seemed to address the fact that no cartoon prior to 1960 was written in script form. In listening to these arguments by current cartoon scriptwriters, I began to wonder how much they really knew about the process used to make the classic cartoons they expressed respect for. I posed a simple question...

Who was your favorite golden age cartoon writer?

It's a fair question- one that I've heard animators discuss and argue about on many occasions. Surely current cartoon writers would have golden age writer heros, just like animators study golden age animators like Milt Kahl or Grim Natwick...


Disney story man, Joe Rinaldi
But none of the scriptwriters participating in the discussion could name a single golden age cartoon writer. The only names they could mention were other current scriptwriters, or novelists, journalists and live action screenwriters who worked in totally different media. They had no idea who pioneered their profession and the process these people used to create cartoons for nearly half a century. To be fair, this sort of ignorance of the history of our craft isn't just limited to writers. I've heard the same sort of admissions of ignorance from producers and directors, as well as artists and animators.

I'm preparing a post on the process used to develop stories for cartoons in the 30s and 40s, but in the meantime, here is an example of a story by my favorite golden age story man... Warren Foster.

Warren Foster is responsible for writing many of the greatest cartoons ever made... He started as a gag man on Fleischer's Popeye series in New York, and moved West in 1938 to join Bob Clampett at Warner Bros. He wrote a string of classic cartoons... "Coal Black And De Sebben Dwarfs", "Birdy And The Beast", "Falling Hare", "Baby Bottleneck", "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", and perhaps Bugs Bunny's most shaded performance, "Tortoise Wins By A Hare".

After Clampett's departure from the studio, he wrote for McKimson ("Gorilla My Dreams", "Easter Yeggs", "The Foghorn Legorn") and Freleng ("Ballot Box Bunny", "Bugs And Thugs", "Birds Anonymous"). Freleng said that Foster was the best story man he ever worked with. In the TV era, Foster wrote episodes of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, The Jetsons and The Flintstones.

Here is a storyboard by Foster from his days at Hanna-Barbera. This is a model of clarity and simplicity, designed to meet the stringent economics imposed on TV animation at the time. This is a board from the pilot episode of The Yogi Bear Show.

















WHAT ABOUT ADVENTURE SHOWS
AND COMIC STRIPS?

In his article, "Detour Guide For An Armchair Marco Polo", master comic strip storyteller, Milton Caniff writes...

There has been a tendency recently for artists to automatically assume they cannot write their own stories because they see so many double by-lines. I contend that any man who can invent pictures can invent situations and dialogue. In fact, it should be easier for the artist to pilot his own action because he is not likely to write himself into one of those undrawable dilemmas in manuscripts about which illustrators have complained for years. --Milton Caniff

Sound familiar?

If you found this post to be interesting, see also... Ren & Stimpy: Big House Blues Part One, Part Two and Part Three / The Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard / Chad's Design For Television / Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention Part One and Part Two / Charlie McElmurry's Year Of The Tiger Storyboard.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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