Audience expect unreal things to happen in the unreal world that animation creates. South Park © Comedy Central.

Animation also marries well with caricature and from that to satire and parody. In vaudeville, an actor slips on a banana peel. In animation, he slips on a banana peel and lands on a trampoline which bounces him off a cliff into the path of an oncoming train which flings him in front of a bulldozer which flattens him like a pancake. This is the same license, which allows shows like The Simpsons and South Park to go places no live-action show could ever go even in this licentious age.

The audience not only accepts all this from animation, but actually expects it. This is precisely because it is so clearly not the real world that even a three year old can figure it out. And in a non-real world, non-real things should happen.

In fact, there are all kinds of expectations built into animation. Let’s say one of our characters is an octopus. If instead of using the movement possibilities those flexible tendrils imply, we treat the character like a cardboard cutout, that is a failure to meet the hidden expectation. And the audience will be disappointed that we didn’t deliver on what we promised.

The Simpsons serves as an analogy of the Everyman struggle to live life the best way he can. TM & ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All Rights Reserved. Cr: Fox

Of course, with this level of understanding, we can also choose to play with the audience. For example, we can build gags that intentionally reverse audience expectations about layout, camera moves, character design or timing.

So first we need to understand how the audience responds to animation in general. Then we can consider content.

If we really want to reach an audience, we have to tap their hidden desires. That sounds mysterious until we realize that, in this regard, we are part of the audience. We also have hidden desires, many of them shared with the audience. The key difference is that we have the means to articulate them. So rather than second guess the audience, our job is dredge our own souls and hone our intuitions about what stories are worth telling. This is where great work comes from, the kind that no market survey can accomplish.

What then is the nature of these hidden desires? Audiences want to be surprised. Or told something they didn’t know. Or didn’t know they knew: they want the shock of recognition. They want to be shown a way to think about their current obsessions or their constant obsessions. And they want to have an experience that takes them beyond the boundaries of their own lives.