- Squash and Stretch-defining the speed, rigidity and mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action. Squash and stretch applies to characters and also exaggerate facial expressions. It’s very important to keep the volume of the object consistent.
- Timing and Motion-spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters. This principle states that the personality and nature of an animation is greatly affected by the number of frames inserted between each main action, basically if you have many drawings that are very close together in between the two main poses the action will be very slow. If you have very few drawings that far apart from each other, the action will be very fast, one simple action can have 10 different meanings depending on how many frames you give it.
- Anticipation- the preparation for an action to give the audience a clue as to what is happening next, as well as to make the action appear more realistic. One example is when a character is about to jump before leaping into the air. He has to prepare for the action by crouching down to build energy, it’s like a spring that coils up before releasing. If this character jumping without any anticipation, it will looks very unrealistic because the energy to jump comes out of nowhere.
- Staging-presenting and idea so that it is unmistakably clear. You want to be in full control of where the audience is looking,all of the elements of the scene work together to move the viewers eyes around the screen.The main action of the scene should be very clear and simple. It can’t be upstaged by all the things that are going on. This takes attention away from the main point, it should also have proper timing, it’s not just about controlling the viewers eyes, it’s also about conveying ideas.
- Follow Through and Overlapping Action- The termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action. This is the technique of having body parts that appendages drag behind the rest of the body, and continue to move in the body stops follow through and overlapping action are often associated with another technique called drag these names all describe the same thing but in different ways.
- Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action-The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement.The first method straight ahead, is where you draw the first drawing, and then you draw the second drawing and then the third drawing, and so on. It’s basically animating as you go. The second method post a pose is where you draw the beginning and end of each main pose and go back later to fill in the drawings in between.
- Slow in and Out- the spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing and movement. this principle refers to the way pretty much all movements start slowly build speed and finishes slowly, this is one of the most important principles to achieving lifelike motion.
- Arcs- the visual path of action for natural movement. So let’s say that we were given these key poses and we’re told to fill in the poses in between, simply taking the midway point between the poses will not work, because this looks way too mechanical, the ball needs to follow an arc. Of course we also need to consider the Slow In and Out caused by gravity.
- Exaggeration-Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action. Basically every action pose and expression can be taken to the next level, to increase the amount of impact on the viewer, making the idea or essence of the action more apparent and real.
- Secondary Action- the action of an object resulting from another action. This principle is often associated with overlapping action, although according to Frank and Ollie, it means something very different, secondary action describes gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to the character animation. For example, a character may be walking angrily, the primary action is the legs and the secondary action is everything else, the arm swinging the head bobbing and the facial movements. It’s important not to let the secondary action dominate the primary action.
- Appeal- creating a design or an action that the audience enjoys watching. basically characters that you animate should be somewhat pleasing to look at, they should have some kind of charismatic aspect to like about them, or they are interesting to look at. Here are three steps to doing it, first use a variety of shapes, second play with proportions, third, keep it simple.
- Solid drawing this principle is about making sure that forms feel like they are in three dimensional space with volume weight and balance. When doing a rough pass of the character use basic solid shapes like spheres, cubes and cylinders to construct the character instead of circles, squares and rectangles. This will help you be mindful of the space they’re in. Avoiding symmetry and drawing perspective lines on the ground to keep track of their distance from the camera, so that you can know when to draw them bigger or smaller.
Week 2: An overview of the 12 Principles of Animation
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