The Principles of Animation

In chapter 3 of the book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas, the authors discuss the 12 principles of animation that are essential to producing an illusion of characters adhering to the basic laws of physics. The 12 principles are as followed:

Squash and Stretch:

The purpose of this principle is to give an object or person a sense of weight and flexibility. For example, the ball drawn on the right becomes much more real when it stretches during its descent to the ground, then "squishes" down on impact.




Anticipation:

Normally used to prepare an audience for an action, as well as to make an action look much more realistic. An example would be a baseball player gripping his bat and adjusting his feet before swinging to hit a baseball.

Staging:

Staging has a simple purpose, which is to direct the audience's attention to what a scene is trying to demonstrate as most important.


Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose:

"Straight ahead" means drawing a scene frame by frame, manually, and with little to no shortcuts. "Pose to Pose" is the opposite, which is drawing a couple key frames, and then drawing the rest later.
A combination of the two techniques is used in most animations to this day.

Follow Through and Overlapping Action:
Both of these techniques help render movement more realistically, as well has help give the impression that drawn characters follow the laws of physics.

Slow In and Slow Out:
This principle involves drawing the acceleration and slow down of movements on a human body, as well as other objects. An example would be animation a character running, then slowing down to take  a breath, then sitting down.

Arc:
The Arc principle involves the physics of trajectory, meaning that when something is flying through the air, unless it's going super faster, would not fly in a straight line. An example would be a basketball player shooting a basketball into a net, the ball would not just go diagonally into the net, it would have to do a near crescent arc to reach it's goal.

Secondary Action:
Secondary Action is adding other motions to a body to make it look more realistic, such as having arms swinging back and forth when walking, or hair flowing when running, etc.

Timing:
When it comes to timing in animation, the correct timing makes objects appear to obey the laws of physics, when a vase is thrown, it is more dramatic when everything else pauses as the vase smashes against a wall.


Exaggeration:
Exaggerating features and movements in animation help keep animated characters from being a little too real. However, there is a fine line of balance between creating a character that is too exaggerated, or not exaggerated enough, causing them to be dull. Here are examples of knights from the video game King's Quest. Notice how differently their bodies vary.

Solid Drawing:
This one is tricky. Solid drawing means giving something volume and weight through understanding the forms of three-dimensional space. Skilled artists must be able to understand everything that must go into animation (weight, anatomy, light and shadow, etc) to successfully draw something in a three dimensional shape.

Appeal:
A very important part of creating a character. What's putting time into drawing a character if they have no aspects that people like? It doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be a good guy, because there are some villains out there we LOVE to HATE. A character has to have interesting qualities that can appeal to multiple people in either the same way, or in their own individual opinions.

Here is a video that includes the drawings of multiple animators collaborating together to create a music video for one of my favorite Youtubers, JonTron. Keep a look out for all 12 principles, some animators may miss some, but others may have included those that were missed.

I will continue my discussion of animation (Fred Moore's 14 Points of Animation) in part two of this blog post.