2026 marks the resurgence of animation’s most sophisticated anti-hero: Wile E. Coyote. While he has spent decades in a cycle of recursive trauma, he recently moved from the desert to the courtroom in the film Coyote v. Acme1. This cinematic…
In the years of 1953 through 1963 five hilariously funny Warners Brothers Looney Tunes were produced featuring the characters of Sam Sheepdog and his antagonist – coworker Ralph Wolf. The overarching theme of the series is the gag that Sam…
Destructive yet corrective, social yet subjective, the contradictory nature of humour makes it difficult to define. This is perhaps never more apparent than when humour relies upon the seriousness of its given topic. Over and above philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s claim…
Humour has been a consistent thematic thread throughout my practice. My first short, animated film, Family Favourites—a wry exploration of how emotionally fraught and dysfunctional Christmas can be—was screened on Channel 4 in 1990. The film drew on the tension…
A cat removing pus from an infected toenail. A wallaby shaved by a ceiling fan. A monster licking a mysterious blue goo with its hairy tongue. In the 1990s, the American television channel Nickelodeon drew on the exaggerated animation and…
Paul Wells (1998) leaves out just one overlooked source of laughing in animated films in his otherwise brilliant chapter on “25 Ways to Start Laughing”. Namely that of a cartoon character laughing. Felix the Cat silently chortles his “Ha! Ha!”…
