How to Animate a Joke (and Not Kill It With a Drawing)

You have a joke that always works at dinner. Or a two-minute bit from an open mic that got a real laugh, not a polite one. Or a friend who says one thing so perfectly that the whole group quotes it for years. Animation can make that joke travel. It can also kill it stone dead, usually by showing the punchline three seconds early. Here is how to keep it alive.

Can you turn a joke into an animation?

Yes, and jokes are among the best things to animate, because they are short, they have a built-in structure, and a drawing can add a second laugh on top of the words. The key is timing. A joke works when the surprise arrives at exactly the right moment, and animation lets you control that moment to the fraction of a second.

Which jokes work best as animation?

Jokes with a picture in them. If the punchline is something you can see, a cat in a tie, a very tall cake, a grandma on a skateboard, animation doubles it. Short observational bits and little stories work well too. Pure wordplay is harder, since the joke lives in spelling, so put the words on screen for those.

How do you time a joke in animation?

Setup, pause, punchline, button. The setup builds a picture. The pause, often just half a second to a second of quiet, lets the audience guess. The punchline breaks the guess. The button is a tiny extra beat after it, like a character blinking or a small sound, that gets a second laugh. Most animated jokes fail at the pause.

How do you animate a stand-up bit?

Cut the bit down to one complete run: a setup and a punchline, perhaps with a tag. Most live bits run too long for a clip, so aim for 20 to 45 seconds. Use a clean recording of your own performance or record it again at home, then let the pictures act out what you describe while your voice stays the star.

Keeping the audience laugh from a live recording can be lovely, it tells viewers the bit works, but only if the sound is clean. If the room was noisy, record it again in a quiet spot and leave a beat where the laugh would be. Our guides to turning a voice recording into a cartoon and animating a podcast clip cover clean sound and cutting in more detail.

Funny animated sketch ideas

No joke ready? These sketch ideas are built for drawing. Each fits in 10 to 30 seconds and needs only one or two characters. Steal freely.

• The overconfident houseplant A cactus gives a motivational speech to the other plants. The fern wilts halfway.
• The job interview A pigeon interviews for a job at a statue. "Where do you see yourself in five years?" "On your head."
• Group chat, live A family group chat acted out in a real living room. Grandpa's all-caps message arrives as a shout.
• The dramatic narrator A nature-documentary voice describes someone trying to open a jar.
• The polite ghost A ghost who apologizes every time it scares someone. It scares nobody. It keeps apologizing.
• Pet's point of view The cat's review of your new sofa. Two stars. Excellent scratching, poor napping angle.
• The birthday candle union Candles on a 60th birthday cake go on strike. Too many of them, not enough cake. See funny birthday video ideas.
• The fridge's diary "Day 3. Somebody opened me again and stared. Took nothing. Closed me. I feel used."

Animating a joke in five steps

1. Step 1

   Write it down tight. The shortest version that still works. Most jokes lose a third of their words and get funnier.

2. Step 2

   Mark the punch word. Underline the single word where the surprise lands. That is where the picture changes.

3. Step 3

   Plan one scene per beat. Setup scene, maybe a build scene, then the punchline image. Three scenes is often enough.

4. Step 4

   Record it with the pause. Say it the way you would at dinner. Leave a real beat before the punchline.

5. Step 5

   Add the button. A blink, a small sound, a sign falling over. Then stop. The best comedy ends one second earlier than feels safe.

Is it okay to animate a joke about a real person?

Keep it kind and ask first. Gentle teasing works for a birthday or a leaving party, when the person is in on it and everyone laughs with them. Anything that would embarrass them in front of their boss or their grandmother, leave out. A good rule: if you would not show it to them first, do not post it.

The funniest animated jokes are small, fast and a little bit silly. Like most good friends.

The quick way: your joke, animated in Nine

Record the joke and choose A voice recording in Nine: the film runs as long as you talk, with your voice and your timing as its sound. Or choose A script and put the setup, the build and the punchline in separate paragraphs, so each becomes its own scene. You watch while the crew draws it and adds music and sound effects, and the crew checks the film before you see it. Then fix the timing in plain words: "longer pause before the punchline," "bigger reaction from the cat."

The Film plan is $29 a month for films up to 20 seconds, which is a perfect joke length. You get a video file in wide, tall and square to send wherever the laugh belongs. See plans, try it, or grab more short formats from 20 second video ideas.