There is a screenwriting mantra that says, “show, don’t tell.” Basically, the more you show through character’s actions, the less you have to actually speak through dialogue. And when you are producing a dialogue-free cartoon such as Bug House, well -- it’s your only method of communication to the audience.
But this is where the benefit of animation comes in. In animation you can give a non-verbal cue to a body part not generally considered emotive. Like, for instance, hair. Our main character Dusty has big blond pigtails, and our character animator Dwight came up with the idea to use her hair like a dog’s ears – they perk up when she’s happy, and droop when she’s angry and mad. 
In other news, we have another animator on board with the project to assemble the pieces of the animatic. We’re always looking for more, especially those that have their own animation software. We’ve been doing a lot of the work on this film remotely, so they don’t need to be Boston-based necessarily. If you know someone, have them contact Jenn at bughousemovie@gmail.com
