Nonverbal Communication In Animation

2.1 Introduction

Animation is a process of bringing still pictures, drawing or even puppets or models, to life. The types of animation as mention are divided into several such as 2D, 3D, stop motion and so on. From bringing these subjects to life, the creator or animators have learned to instil few important things needed in animation such as the gesture, the storyline, sounds and so on.

Nonverbal or mime animation is a concept of visualising a story without using dialogue or less dialogue at certain times. From the late 1800s, since the creation of the first animation, the concept has always been about bringing the visual to life. The addition of sound effects were only added later on just to emphasize the action and gesture in the animation,

Audience find this method of using dialogue to tell the story is preferable as it is easy to understand rather than focusing on the action to figure out the storyline. Fellow animators and audience may have argue on which type of animation would be most watched and very effective storytelling through the method the animators chose. However, several that agree of the nonverbal ways by reasons of communication through gesture and sound is a lot easier than dialogues as human may understand gesture easily rather than having to figure out other languages as studies showed that more than 65% of information are exchanged through face-to-face interaction is expressed through nonverbal means. (Bodily Communication, 1988)

Yet a few of these talented people sometimes opted to use the nonverbal storytelling in animation such as Chuck Jones, making animation with the new technology sans dialogue in some of his animation, preferring to show rather than

Coyote, being a nonverbal character alongside with his uncatchable nemesis in the show, the Roadrunner, who apparently also a nonverbal and only use the Beep Beep sound, made their show famous by Jones idea of their storytelling gesture. Wile E. Coyote would try to catch the Roadrunner in every episodes of the series, without ever succeeding. Jones has directed this to be a nonverbal series as audience could never hear a word of dialogue coming from the characters mouth. He shows the dialogue in his action.

Even as he directed the Looney Tunes, he has always focused more on the action that tells the storyline instead of focusing on the dialogue. The dialogue that he would insert in his work would be a specific dialogue which helps the story or as a gag line which made the audience laugh. Said line would be the infamous ‘Whats up Doc?’ by Bugs Bunny. Jones said the line was to emphasize Bugs adapting famous Clark Gables ‘performance in ‘It Happened One Night’ film. (Martin G. , 1996-2004) This explain that Jones only use dialogue in some of his animation to help strengthen the character, which he sometimes did not need at