History of the 12 principles of animation.

The 12 principles of animation were

introduced by two animators at Disney in
1981. Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
included them in their book The Illusion of
Life: Disney Animation, published that year.
1. Squash and Stretch.

Arguably the most fundamental of the 12 principles of

animation. Squash and stretch is applied to give a sense of
weight and/or flexibility to objects or even to people. Animate a
simple object like a bouncing ball - as it hits the ground, you can
squash the ball flat and widen it.

Although exaggerated, this animation is grounded in reality,

because it creates the illusion of the ball being distorted by an
outside force - just like in real life.

You can apply squash and stretch to more realistic animation,

too. But keep in mind the object’s volume. If the length of the
ball is vertically stretched, its width must contract horizontally.
2. Anticipation
Use anticipation to add some realism when you want to prepare your audience for some
action. Consider what people do when they prepare to do something. A footballer about to
take a penalty would steady themselves with their arms or swing their foot back ready to kick.
If a golfer wants to hit a golf ball, they must swing their arms back first.

Anticipation doesn’t just have to apply to sporty actions. Focus on an object a character may
be about to pick up or have a character anticipating somebody’s arrival on screen.
3. Staging
When considering staging, you’re in the role of a film or theatre
director. You need to think about where you’re putting the camera,
what it’s focusing on, where the ‘actors’ will be and what they’re
going to do. Whether they’re fun cartoon characters or realistically
drawn people, staging matters and is sometimes underestimated.

You want your audience’s attention to be on the important

elements of the story you’re telling and avoid distracting them
with unnecessary detail. With a combination of lighting, framing
and composition, plus ensuring that you remove clutter, you’ll be
able to effectively advance your story.
4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose are in a sense two principles in one,
each concerning different approaches to drawing. Straight ahead
action scenes involve animating each frame from beginning to end.
Do this to create a fluid illusion of movement for action scenes, but
not if you want to create exact poses with proportions maintained.

With pose to pose, animators start by drawing key frames and they
fill in the intervals later. Because relation to surroundings and
composition become more important, this approach is preferable for
emotional, dramatic scenes. As Disney films often involve dramatic
and action scenes, their animators would often adopt both
approaches.

With computer animation, the problems of straight-ahead action are

removed as computers can remove the potential proportion issue.
They can also fill in the missing sequences in pose to pose.
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action.
These two movement-based principles combine to make
movement in animation more realistic and create the impression
characters are following the laws of physics.

Follow through concerns the parts of the body that continue to

move when a character stops. The parts then pull back towards
the centre of mass, just like with a real person. Follow through also
applies to objects.

Parts of the body don’t move at the same rate and overlapping
action demonstrates this. For example, you could have a
character’s hair moving during the momentum of action and when
the action is over, it continues to move a fraction longer than the
rest of the character.
6. Ease In, Ease Out.

This animation principle is also known as ‘slow in and

slow out’. In the real world, objects have to accelerate as
they start moving and slow down before stopping. For
example, a person running, a car on the road or a
pendulum.

To represent this in animation, more frames must be

drawn at the beginning and end in an action sequence.
Ease in, ease out adds more realism to your animation
and will help the audience identify and sympathise with
your characters.
7. Arcs.
In real life, most actions have an arched trajectory. To achieve greater
realism, animators should follow this principle. Whether you’re creating the
effect of limbs moving or an object thrown into the air, movements that
follow natural arcs will create fluidity and avoid unnatural, erratic animation.

To keep arcs in mind, traditional animators often draw them lightly on paper
to use as reference and to erase when they’re no longer needed. Speed and
timing are important with arcs, as sometimes they happen so quickly that
they blur to the point they’re unrecognisable.

Of course, this is sometimes done deliberately, to give the impression of

something unrealistically or amusingly fast. This is known as an animation
smear. Chuck Jones, one of the greatest animators of the 20th century, was
an expert at these. He was behind one of the first examples in a short for
Warner Bros in 1942. Jones only used it to save time, but liked it and would
return to the trope for many animations in the Looney Tunes series. It's still
used today in The Simpsons.
8. Secondary Action

This principle of animation helps emphasise the main

action within a scene by adding an extra dimension to
your characters and objects. Subtleties, such as the
way a person swings their arms while walking down
the street, give colour to your creations and make
them appear more human.

Providing they don’t take attention away from the

main action, secondary actions can really bring a
scene to life.
9. Timing.
As in real life, animation is all about timing. Get this principle
right and it grounds your animation in realism, as everything will
appear to follow the laws of physics. Think about the size and
weight of your characters in relation to what and who are around
them. A lightweight person or object is going to react quicker to
being pushed than a heavy one.

To get your timing right in animation, get your number of frames

or drawings right. As with the ease in, ease out animation
principle, the slower the action, the more frames or drawings
you’ll need to add.
10. Exaggeration.
This is a fine art and one that Disney animators are experts at. Many of the 12
principles of animation are grounded in realism and this is no exception.
However, if you totally avoid exaggeration, animation can often be too real
and is in danger of looking dull.

Disney believes that exaggeration should be true to reality to an extent, but

made more extreme - often pushed just beyond the realms of realism, to
make their characters pop and add fun to their adventures.

A classic trope and great example of exaggeration in animation is the jaw

drop. When a character is surprised, shocked or falls in love at first sight,
animators often don’t just show a slightly stunned, open-mouthed
expression. They get their point across by showing their character’s mouth
dropping way beyond realism - often literally to the floor.
11. Solid Drawing

Solid drawing in animation is one of the more difficult

principles to get right, especially in traditional animation.
This is because you need to make your creations feel 3D
and give them weight and volume. Art classes are useful
to give you deeper knowledge of weight, balance, gravity,
light, shadow and more. In The Illusion of Life, Johnston
and Thomas warned of the danger of creating ‘twins’,
where characters would appear lifeless because their left
and right sides were exactly the same.
12. Appeal
The last of the 12 principles of animation is one of the most
important. In film, TV and theatre, directors want their
actors to have charisma. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a
hero or villain - the characters should be interesting enough
to make viewers want to know how their story develops.

Animators should give all their creations appeal, whether

it’s a cute caterpillar or a dragon hell-bent on destruction.
There is no real formula, though a good idea for giving a
creation the ‘awww’ factor is to make their face round and
childlike. Heroes often have strong, angular and symmetrical
features.
ANSWER KEY
1. Ollie Johston  Ease In, Ease Out
2. Frank Thomas  Arcs
3.Anticipation  Secondary Action
4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to  Timing
pose  Exaggeration
5. Ease In Ease Out  Solid Drawing
 Squash and Stretch.  Appeal
 Anticipation
 Staging
 Straight Ahead Action and Pose to
Pose
 Follow Through and Overlapping
Action.