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12 Basic Principles of Animation

The document outlines 12 principles of animation: 1) Anticipation, 2) Straight ahead and pose to pose animation, 3) Follow through and overlapping action, 4) Slow out and slow in, 5) Arcs, 6) Secondary action, 7) Exaggeration, 8) Solid drawing, 9) Appeal, 10) 5 steps for animating a scene including thumbnails, layout, key poses, timing, and animating, 11) The silhouette rule, and 12) The rule of relativity. It provides descriptions and examples for each principle to effectively communicate techniques for creating lifelike animated movements and expressions.

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Joon Kim
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79 views5 pages

12 Basic Principles of Animation

The document outlines 12 principles of animation: 1) Anticipation, 2) Straight ahead and pose to pose animation, 3) Follow through and overlapping action, 4) Slow out and slow in, 5) Arcs, 6) Secondary action, 7) Exaggeration, 8) Solid drawing, 9) Appeal, 10) 5 steps for animating a scene including thumbnails, layout, key poses, timing, and animating, 11) The silhouette rule, and 12) The rule of relativity. It provides descriptions and examples for each principle to effectively communicate techniques for creating lifelike animated movements and expressions.

Uploaded by

Joon Kim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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12 Basic Principles of Animation

1.

2.

3. ANTICIPATION: T This is done to prepare the audience for a major action the
character is about to perform such as starting to throw, run, jump or change
expressions. Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation, such as a
pitcher’s wind-up or a golfer’s back swing. Feature animation is often less broad
than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a character’s
personality. A comic effect can be achieved by not using the anticipation after a
series of gags using anticipation.

4. STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION: A straight ahead animator


starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing until the end of a scene.
You can lose size, volume, proportions, even accents with this method, but it
does have spontaneity and freshness. Smooth, fast and / or wild action scenes
are done this way.

Pose to pose animation is more planned out with key drawings done at intervals
throughout the scene. Size, volume, and proportions are controlled better this
way, as is the action. An assistant can be better used with this method so that
the animator doesn’t have to execute inbetweens for every pair of key poses in a
scene. An animator can do more scenes this way and concentrate on planning
and timing the animation.

5. FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION:


A) The main body of the character stops but other parts continue to catch up to
the main mass of the character such as arms, long hair, clothing (coattails or
a dress) that continue following the path of action; nothing stops all at once;
This is follow through.
B) Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes
or hair continue forward as the character is going in a new direction, to be
followed, a number of frames later, by those clothes and hair into that new
direction.
C) The opposite of overlapping in animation is “Drag.” For example, when
Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes don’t keep
up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly.
Example: When Cinderella starts to dance, her skirt doesn’t begin to move
with her immediately but catches up a few frames later.

6. SLOW OUT AND SLOW IN: As an action starts, we have more drawings near
the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next
pose. Fewer drawings make the action faster, more drawings slow down the
action. Slow ins and slow outs soften the action, making it more life-like, but for
a gag action, we may omit some slow out or slow ins.

7. ARC’S: All actions, with a few an exceptions (such as the animation of a


mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true
of the human figure and the action of animals Arcs give animation a more natural
action and better flow.

8. SECONDARY ACTION: Adds to and enriches the main action and adds more
dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the
main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character.
The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward leaning; the leg action is just short
of a stomping walk. The secondary action is a few strong gestures of the arms
working with the walk; and also the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the
same time with tilts and turns of the head to accentuate the walk and the
dialogue, but not so much as to distract from the walk action. All of these
actions should work together in support of one another.
9. EXAGGERATION: Is the distorted or enlarged caricature of facial features,
expressions, poses, attitudes and / or actions used to accent the animation.
When done correctly exaggeration will make the character or action distort
beyond its actual mass yet to the viewer it will appear as normal within the
context of the action. This principle is used more in shorts than in feature
animation.

10. SOLID DRAWING: The basic principles of drawing for form, weight, volume
solidity and the illusion of three dimensions apply to animation as it does to
academic drawing. In a way, we draw cartoon in the classical sense: pencil
sketches or drawings for reproduction into color and movement. We must give
the characters we animate the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life:
movement in space and movement in time.

11. APPEAL: A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal.
Appealing animation doesn’t mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters
have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal,
as we have used it, includes easy-to-read design, clear drawing, and personality
development which captures and involves the audience’s interest. Early
cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a feature. There was
no need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of
artwork through the entire production. Like all forms of story telling, the feature
has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

5 Steps In Animating a Scene


1. Think About the scene: Plan out how the scene should be animated.
Don’t start animating until you have the action planned out in your
mind. Also, keep in mind the character’s personality and how the
scene fits the overall picture.

2. Thumbnails: Small sketches to work out the staging of the character


in the scene and the key poses in the scene. Each pose should tell
something about the character. Also, be aware of how your scenes fit
into the viual continuity of the sequence.

3. LAYOUT Plan on how the action is going to move in the field. You
are composing for mass over time. Make sure your character fits the
perspective and scale of the background. If there are unusual angles
or staging that will cause difficulty in drawing the animation, work
them out in the thumbnail sketches, the make them full size before
doing the animation.

4. KEY POSES Blow-up thumbnail sketches to full size. Redraw your


thumbnail poses to fit the layout for the scene and adjust them to
work as your key rough poses for animating your scene.

5. TIMING and ANIMATING Once the key poses and staging are
done, timing can be plotted in the exposure sheet by assigning frames
to each key pose to see how the animation might work. Shoot these
ruff timings to see if the animation/timing is working correctly. Adjust
if need be.

Additional poses can now be added to better control the acting,


expressions, dialogue and timing. Once these new poses are added
into the exposure sheets, it will show what additional inbetween
drawings will be needed to complete the character’s action at the
speed and timing the animator wants.

NUMBER ONE RULE OF ANIMATION

The Silhouette Rule


Darken any key pose and it should immediately read what the action or emotion is
of that character.
NUMBER TWO RULE OF ANIMATION

The Rule of Relativity


The relative position of one drawing to the next affects the timing.

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