• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.374-384
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• 2014

Humor is an essential ability in young children's life. That is why humor has relation with cognitive development, and humor is the effective factor of attachment, social relationship, and positive self-concept for young children. For this study, the picture books written and illustrated by Mo Willems, Caldetcott Honor Medal winner, were chosen and analyzed. Mo Willems' five winning works were analyzed according to the five elements of humor from Bergson's comic theory. As results, the picture books of Mo Willems include the elements of humor, such as shape, movement, situation and language, and personality. This results suggest that the "adaptive" humor in picture books of Mo Willems should have an educational power to develop a sense of humor to young children, parents, and teachers.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.19
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• pp.51-64
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• 2010

Although there has been a significant technological and representational achievements in domestic animation industry since the beginning of the 21th century due to the high expectation and boost in production, domestic long and short film animations have been less favored compared to foreign animations because they are less entertaining. For small scale productions including students, it is easier to create short film animations due to small budget and short time frame. In addition, as shown in Pixar animation studios case, production of short film animations can lead to success in production of long film animations from better ideas and technology improvements. This research studies factors that contribute to entertainment and humor of short film animation by examining Pixar's short film animations based on Henri Bergson's comedy factors, which are shape, movement, situation and language, and personality. The most noticeable fact is that the humor by situation is found in all short films. Comedy aspect shown in the form of character's internal characteristic is something that has to be considered from the beginning of character design. Contribution of language is minor compared to movement or gesture, which are more often used to cause humor. Finally, character's personality has to be clear and decided beforehand in order to create comedy situations. After studying various short film animations, I found out that the more successfully humorous an animation is, the more it uses various combinations of the above mentioned comedy factors. By fully analyzing and adopting commercially and artistically successful Pixar's short film animations as the benchmark, planning and production of domestic short film animations can perform entertainment role both domestically and globally.