In the Western cartoon world we’ve been indoctrinated in the Bugs Bunny\/Mickey Mouse tradition of visual communication: “Show Don’t Tell”. The logic goes, if we’re working within the animated medium, we should utilize the main aspect of it, which is the drawing\/movement over the writing, which better suits other mediums such as radio, live action, plays etc… Animation is primarily a visual medium, and to mire it in expository dialogue is to disregard its potential. <\/p>\n
When I was writing dialog for Adventure Time, I always kept in mind the idea of paring down dialog to its most essential information, to make room for visual ideas. Some people online might accuse me of being over wordy in the episodes I worked on, but whatever made it to screen was originally much beefier in the first pass phase of storyboarding. On the second pass I would comb through my dialog and try to communicate each sentiment in as few words as I could imagine, while still retaining the spirit and humor of the scene. <\/p>\n
I still feel strongly about striking a balance between dialog and movement in cartoons, however I recently plowed through all 140+ episodes of HunterxHunter on Netflix and Crunchyroll and was exposed to the value of insanely dense expository dialog in animation. <\/p>\n
Anime shows often use huge inner monologues that decompress time, and lay out these psychological maps for the audience to follow. These time stretched inner monologues that move in real time<\/em> only seem to exist in Western superhero comics and in Anime. <\/p>\n
![\"silver_surfer_monologue\"](\"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/silver_surfer_monologue.jpg\")
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