Animation Principles

The 12 principles of animation were created by animators from Disney, with them considering these different principles to be the basis of all animation. Consideration of these 12 is fundamental to the success of any project that even partially includes animation.

#1 - Squash And Stretch

Squash and stretch is normally when weight and flexibility are given to an animation, a classic example of which is a bouncing ball. A bouncing ball will deform when it hits the floor as it would in real life, giving a sense of realism to the animation despite it being so simple. At the same time it will become wider to compensate for the decreased height, another very useful thing to give realism to an animation.

#2 - Anticipation

Anticipation is what people do before the main action. This can be as simple as a golfer raising their arms before swinging at the golf ball, or when a footballer pulls their foot back before sending the ball flying through the air. This isn't limited to sport though, another thing it reaches is when a character picks up an object and perhaps struggles or has to readjust something like their hand position.

#3 - Staging

Staging is just acting as a director but in animation, you need to work out the best place to put the camera and the best way to have something play out in the animated world. For any animation you need to have good framing, little to no onstructive clutter and lighting that allows the viewer to see the animation in full.

#4 - Straight ahead action and pose to pose

Straight ahead and pose to pose are both different methods of animation. Straight ahead is when you animate one frame after another, whilst pose to pose means that you animate a frame for each different pose and then fill in the gaps to make the animation look as fluid as possible. With computers there's no issues with proportion so pose to pose is much more realistic than when it was a drawn method, it also helps to create dramatic or action scenes.

#5 - Follow through and overlapping action

These two ensure that the animated characters are actually following the laws of physics. This is seen in parts of animation like when a character stops moving and their hair takes a fraction of a second longer since it is so light. It can also be seen when a character's body parts take longer to come to a full stop than the centre of mass or vice versa.                                                                         

#6 - Ease in, ease out

In animation there's the principle of acceleration that must be followed for realism. Frames drawn at the beginning and end more than throughout can mean that the animation looks much more realistic as the character or object seems to actually have weight to it and move slower at the start and end.

#7 - Arcs

#8 - Secondary action

#9 - Timing

#10 - Exaggeration

#11 - Solid drawing

#12 - Appeal