Last time we looked at how analogy works with art in general. Now it’s time to look at how analogy works with animation in particular. So here we go —

Why are you doing this in animation? Stories about shootouts, kung fu fighters, little girls playing dress up; stories about people who are late for work and then miss the bus and have to run across town (only to discover that, yes, it’s a holiday)… It seems like I’ve dealt with thousands of project ideas like these over the years and I have asked this question more times than I can remember. It makes me wonder: do we really understand animation?

Let’s say you are making a film about rebellion. You could do a story about a teenager who is so fed up with school that he flunks out and runs away and then one of his teachers goes after him and talks him into coming back. But this movie of the week approach barely scratches the surface of animation’s potential. Your film could just end up looking like an imitation of live-action and even a good imitation is, by its very nature, second best. If you are going to do more than scratch the surface, you need to start thinking like an animator.

And that means you need to understand that animation, like every medium, has a unique set of properties. Here are some of those properties:

1. The connection with caricature. From this we get two keys words: simplify and exaggerate. Interestingly, this doesn’t just apply to design but to everything: movement, backgrounds, even camera angles and writing.

2.The role of movement. Sound and static elements are important but animated film communicates best through motion.

3.The relationship with fantasy. This is the medium where, at the outset, anything can happen and it’s through this property that we achieve magic. Other media can refer to metaphor but animation makes it real.

These three are important attributes and very useful for making better animated films. There is a fourth property, though, which is the most inherent and important by far. That is:

4.The relationship with reality. We all know that animation can take reality and play with it in any way imaginable. But we also have to understand that by its very nature, animation exists in an alternative world even when it tackles very realistic subject matter. Every element of animation is constructed, is essentially an illusion. And at some level the audience is aware of this fact. This gives us a lot of license, but it also gives us special responsibilities, as we shall see.

So what does any of this have to do with analogy?

Let’s consider the first three characteristics. These work to enhance the quality of our films. To make the best use of animation, we can choose to incorporate them into every aspect of the film. However, this works best if we build the properties into the analogy from the beginning, rather than using them randomly at a later point.

Once we have a good working core analogy, we can begin to consider that fourth characteristic. This one is so deeply built into the medium, that there is no choice involved — it’s just there. But those alternative worlds don’t come from nowhere. We have to build them as we develop our ideas. This is where it becomes tricky, because to do that, we have to account for everything.