I decided to research into characterisation and comedic timing for the project, to help us inject what we want into our own characters. This documentary, Chuck Jones - The Evolution of an Artist, provided me with some very helpful information and advice on both and after watching it 3-4 times, I made some notes on some of the most important aspects I took from it. I really believe this will help us make more meaningful characters and environments. 

Chuck Jones puts an emphasis on the amount of time put into character development, mentioning how actors already come with an ability from other parts they've played, however if you bring in a drawing all you have is that drawing. You as the artist have to put in that character. This has put even more of an importance to me about character development - to really inject life into a character you have to give them your time. The least thing I want is to have characters that are less meaningful, less relatable and less full of life, so I will definitely be making sure character development is scheduled in properly and significantly. 

The character development is broken into two questions - what does the character want and as a result, how does the character move? Each character in a story has to have define wants that are easy for the audience to understand. How the individual then moves is dictated by what is going on inside, so to be able to understand the movement of the character you have to think like how they would think - their feelings, their goals, their wants. Jones gave a really helpful quote in saying, "If you can't tell what's happening by the way a character moves you're not animating."

The comedic side of the animation is broken down into assumption and reality - the gag is set up so the audience expects one thing to happen but then another does. This got me thinking about trying to think more outside of the box when it comes to jokes - don't go for the immediately obvious. The advice given from the documentary, and how Jones worked, to stop gags falling into the same routine is to set yourself disciplines and challenges. For example, in the documentary it shows characters that have no face or no mouth or are kept to one line of the same dialogue. The key is to have lots of rules about the world, character and their behaviour. 

I also learnt gags are also set up by human behaviour and logic - if it's not logic it's not going to be funny and if it's not human behaviour then how do people know it's meant to be funny? 

Jones' advice at the end of the documentary was to study a lot of art and to read a lot of books. He put an emphasis on studying the real world and putting it into your work, as how can you draw if you have nothing to draw.  It's not just about drawing a funny face, a lot of research and knowledge has to be done beforehand. 

This documentary helped me a lot with how to develop the characterisation of our story, as before it was an area I was aware needed to be approached but was unsure of where to begin and the right way to do it. Breaking it down into simpler steps has made the process a lot clearer and defined to me and it's definitely given me a starting point for discussion about the characters with my crew.