Principles of Animation

• Squash & Stretch

  • when applied, it gives your animated characters and objects the illusion of gravity, weight, mass, and flexibility
  • it's important to keep the object's volume consistent
  • when you squash something, it needs to get wider, and when you stretch something, it gets thinner
• Anticipation

  • helps to prepare the viewer for what's about to happen
  • when applied, it has the effect of making the object's action more realistic
• Staging

  • keep the focus on what's important within the scene and keep the motion of everything else of non-importance to a minimum
• Straight-Ahead Action and Pose-to-pose

  • Straight-ahead action involves drawing frame-by-frame from start to finish.
  • Pose-to-pose, you draw the beginning frame, end frame, and a few keyframes in between, then you go back and complete the rest
• Follow through and Overlapping Action

  • when a moving object comes to a stop, parts might continue to move in the same direction because of the force of forward momentum
  • secondary elements (hair, clothing, fat) - follow through on the primary element overlapping its action
• Slow in, slow out

  • an object starts moving slowly, before gaining momentum and speeding up
  • ex. car, airplane, bird
• Arcs

  • operate along a curved trajectory that adds illusion of life to an animated object in action
  • without arcs, animation would be stiff and mechanical
• Secondary Action

  • gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to character animation
  • can give more personality and insight to what the character is doing or thinking
• Timing

  • where on a timeline you put each frame of action
  • using correct timing allows you to control the mood and the reaction of your characters and objects
• Exaggeration

  • presents a character's features and actions in an extreme form for comedic or dramatic effect
  • can include distortions in facial features, body types, and expressions, and also character's movement
• Solid Drawing

  • making sure that animated forms feel like they are in three-dimensional space
• Appeal

  • people remember real, interesting, and engaging characters
  • animated characters should be pleasing to look at and have a charismatic aspect to them; applies to antagonists of the story
• Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston

  • introduced Disney's 12 basic principles of animation in their book
  • The illusion of Life: Disney Animation (1981)
  • the principles are based on the work of Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, in their quest for more realistic animation