12 Principles Of Animation

1. Squash and Stretch

This talks about how an object will get thinner or flatter to emphasize momentum, mass, speed and weight. It is crucial to keep the volume of the object consistent when drawing the squashing and stretching.

Ex: A bouncy ball will squish more when it hits the floor and a bowling ball will stay more of a firm circle.

2. Anticipation

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the character or object look more natural.

Ex: A soccer player has to pull their leg back before kicking a soccer ball.

3. Staging

Staging is used to make clear what is important in a scene and to direct the audience's attention. All the elements of the animation should work together to focus what the audience is looking at.

Ex: If you want to make a house look poor, put extra holes in the wall, springs coming out the couch, broken windows.

4. Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead

These are 2 different ways of animating movement. Straight ahead is animating frames beginning to end, or as you go. Pose to pose is drawing the key frames and filling in the intervals later. Straight ahead is good for unpredictable movement like fire or dust clouds, while pose to pose is good for character movement.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

These are also 2 different ways of animating movement. Follow through means that loosely tied body parts or apparel should continue to move even after the body has stopped before they are “pulled back” to the center mass. Overlapping action means that different parts of a body move at different speeds. Examples for follow through would be if a character has a tail or long ears and an example for overlapping action would be a character's head and arms.

6. Slow In and Slow Out

In the real world, everything needs time to accelerate and slow down. To achieve this there are more drawings or frames in the beginning of a sequence and towards the end.

Ex: Bouncing ball will slow down and speed up towards the top of a bounce.

7. Arc

The most natural actions follow a circular motion, or arc. Arcs help show a natural trajectory. Arcs can be added to almost any body movement.

Ex: A character turning their head should lower their head as the turn, and raise it as they reach the other side.

8. Secondary Action

This is not to be confused with overlapping action. Secondary action is animation used to emphasize the primary action. If a character is knocking on the door, the other hand not being used can show the mood. For example, if the hand is a fist, the character could be angry.

9. Timing

Timing is the amount of frames and animation has in a period of time. For example, a blimp would have more frames, implying it moves slow, and a jet would have less frames implying it is moving fast.

10 Exaggeration

The idea of making something more convincing. If somebody is sad, make them sadder, if somebody is happy, make them happier.

11. Solid Drawing

This means that when creating characters, use basic shapes like circles, squares and triangles to form the characters shape. The animator must have a very well understanding of 3d shapes and how to give them volume and weight.

12. Appeal

Appeal is how visually pleasing something is to look at. This doesn't mean the character has to be good looking, they could be interesting. For example, making a villan look like a villan. Giving characters dynamic shapes can greatly boost the appeal.

There are 12 basic principles of animation.

squash and stretch

anticipation

staging

pose to pose and straight ahead

follow through and overlapping action

slow in and slow out

arc

secondary action

timing

exaggeration

solid drawing

appeal