Animation's Direct Influence From Silent Actors

Of all the famous characters that have been established in Animation, Felix the Cat was the original success story of comic art to superstar. This success can be credited much to how he was marketed and how the audience received his silent humor on screen. Much of his success has been credited directly to many of the panamime actions he performs, and of course the clever metamorphoses Felix performs by transforming his tail into a variety of objects for use in his adventures. In early silent films, the success of the film depends largely on the success of the silent performance of the actor, their facial gesture, and interaction with their stage environment. With Felix, we find an equaled success in the facial and silent panamime he performs, but find that with animation, Felix is able to manipulate his environment and surroundings based of the comic metamorphoses he performs, giving the character a unique fantasy-like comic ability that no live-action actor could effectively attempt to mimic. In this particular short film of Felix, "Felix Goes To Hollywood", we see the character directly interpret the actions of Chaplin in an animated run-in of sorts. The cartoon finds a way to visually poke fun of the influential ideas and personalities that were derived to form Felix's character in a sort of visual pun. The scene shows Felix humorously chased from an acting studio for "Stealing" some of Chaplin's material to make it big in a Hollywood acting studio. What should be noted of this cartoon, is that aside from soundtrack, all motions are conveyed silent to convey story and mood, as presented in early silent live-action cinema. Although some thoughts seem to be expressed through comic "thought-bubbles", it is the silent actions we are studying and their effectiveness in the performance of Felix and the ability to convey messages through silent gestural character animation. I think it is equally important as well to note the facial gestures of Harry Langdon and how facial gestures are used in characters in effective ways throughout the film as exaggerated gestural representations of emotion. For a direct reference to the Felix/Chaplin scene, scroll into the clip till 6:40.

Charlie Chaplin- Boxing Scene

This is another piece that i felt could sort of be incorporated as successful movements in terms of the choreography involved to influence the humor of the boxing match. Boxing in itself is sort of a dance like presentation of two figures interacting with each other and in this case Chaplins choreography invokes a strong humorous quality to what should be a raging battle between two fighters. Also some very succesful gestures in the referee's motions and the secondary characters in the audience as the rant and rave over the fights actions.

Charlie Chaplin -- Modern Times (1936)

I particulary enjoyed the presentation of gesture and dance that is presented by Chaplin in this piece. Being that we are going to have a presenter who is particularly interested in the art of dance motion as a conveyer of character in story (Margo Apostolos), i think this film provokes and excellent characterized look at how dance and gesture can successfully be interpreted in film. It also serves as a successful way to show how audiences react to Chaplin's motions, although they too are part of the movie.

Harry Langdon in THE STRONG MAN

Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (Langdon had very exaggerated facial expressions that accompany a variety of silent acted postures and gestures that evoke an emotional state or mood very successfully)

Early Gesture Applications in Silent Films

Hey Gang,

Here is a little bit of the research i have been doing in the past few weeks. I have particularly been studying some of the origins of character animation in terms of where characterized movements derived in early cinema and what were some of the influences of the character animators of the past. With the increasing popularity in silent cinema back the in day, many animators found influence from the pioneer actors of silent pantomime films such as Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon. Included in this blog i have posted a few clips from some very successful silent Chaplin and Langdon films that show some of the early exaggerated actions and gesture motions that animated artist would frequently reference in terms of telling story or provoking emotions through silent acting. Especially through characters such as Felix who was a walking, talking, cat version of Charlie. The clips prove to be very successful in provoking mood and actions that can be read and interpreted by the audience with little or no sound at all. The clips should be included below this post.....enjoy! :)

Also I included two links that i think are very detailed and interesting to look at. the first one is a blog that happens to be about Gesture in Animation. The second one is an article that discusses gesture and I think Hyun can find some interesting interpretations of gesture and emblems in this articles, just scroll down till you find the particular section. There is alot of information in the second article so just scan through till you can find related topics. Hope these are helpful, informative links for you all.

A Nice Gesture- Art & Animation Blog:
http://jeroenarendsen.nl/category/art-animation/

Gesture Article:
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~brian_rotman/gesture.html