Week 1: The 12 Principles of Animation

Introduction:

Throughout this blog post, I’ll discuss the importance of the 12 principles of animation and why they’re essential to know before beginning any animation. These principles were described by the famous animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

Squash & Stretch:

This animation principle is considered one of the most important principles of animation. The Squash & Stretch principle causes objects to get longer or flatter to emphasise speed, momentum, weight, and mass. The amount an object squashes and stretches tells us something about its mass. For instance, If a soft object (e.g. water balloon) were to fall to the floor, the object would squash and stretch a lot more than a stiffer object (e.g. bowling ball). When we use squash and stretch in our animations, we must constantly maintain the object’s volume. So as the object gets longer, it also gets narrower, and as the objects get flatter, it also gets wider.

Anticipation:

This animation principle prepares the audience by giving them a clue for what will happen next, as well as to making the action appear more realistic. Anticipation helps communicate actions to the audience by preparing them for the following action. It would seem very unnatural without anticipating the character’s action. For instance, if a character is about to jump, bending the character’s knees before the jump can build anticipation. With that said, animators can also use anticipation to trick the audience. For instance, you can have the character(s) eyes look at one area of the frame, leading the audience’s attention to that area, and then surprise them by having an object appear on the screen in a completely different area. There are multiple levels of anticipation, where characters can perform another action to pre-anticipate the initial anticipation action to anticipate the action further. For instance, if a character throws a punch, the animator could make the character lean forward (pre-anticipation) before pulling their arm back (anticipation).

Staging:

Staging is the presentation of an idea to be entirely and unmistakably clear. It can apply to acting, timing, camera angle, position and setting. It’s vital to control where the audience is looking on the frame. When animating, the scene’s main action should be obvious and simple and not be upstaged by other actions that are going on in the background as it’ll take attention away from the main point. Timing is essential when it comes to staging. It’s ideal for letting one action finish before the other person starts their action instead of overlapping them. On some occasions, we need to insert pauses if the audience must process actions on the frame before moving forward. This is usually the case if there’s text displayed. Staging is also about conveying ideas. We want to make the audience aware of what’s happening. For instance, if we’re going to convey the idea that someone is a severe overeater. We would exaggerate the scene by adding more food and stains onto the character’s shirt. We could also reposition the camera by moving it down below the character to make them look larger than usual.

Straight Ahead & Pose-to-Pose:

This animation principle describes two methods used to animate drawings. Straight Ahead animation is when the drawings are done one after the other in chronological order, animating as you go along. Pose-to-pose is when the animator draws the beginning and end of each main pose and goes back later to fill the drawings in between. Each of these methods has its benefits. Pose-to-pose is better for most actions as you’re given more control. You will have a good idea of what the action will look like early in the process, as you’ll have the primary poses completed already.

On the other hand, straight-ahead animations are suitable for unpredictable animations – for instance, fire, water, clouds of dust, and explosions. Straight ahead works best here because laws of physics work at a constant rate, which are hard to predict how it will work pose-to-pose.

Follow-Through and Overlapping Action:

This technique refers to when body parts and appendages are dragged behind the rest of the body and continue to move after the body has stopped. Follow-through and overlapping action are usually associated with the Drag technique. These techniques describe the same thing, but in different aspects. For instance, Follow-through refers to how body parts continue to move after the body has stopped. Overlapping action describes the offset between the time of the main body and its body parts. Drag describes the technique of delaying the movement of body parts in relation to the main body. Follow-through and overlapping actions add great realism to the character or object. If the main body moves, the tip of the appendage should be the last to catch up, and once the main body comes to a stop, the tip of the appendage should follow through the furthest before settling back. Similarly to Squash & Stretch, the amount of drag found within an object tells us about its mass. For instance, a feather would delay longer and travel further than a TV antenna.

Slow-in and Slow-out:

This animation principle refers to how all movements start slowly, build speed, and finish slow. It’s an important principle to achieve lifelike motion. Things will feel mechanical without slow-in & slow-out, similar to a robot as they move at a constant speed. In animation, this effect can be achieved by adding additional frames at the beginning and end of the action sequence.

Arcs:

Not many organisms are capable of mechanically moving in and out or up-and-down. Instead, they usually move in a circular path, also known as an Arc. In animation, it’s best to stick with the laws of physics for realism purposes and animate our objects to follow an arc in their movements.

Secondary Action:

This animation principle is often associated with overlapping action. However, Frank and Ollie describe secondary actions as gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to the character animation. For instance, if a character walks angrily, the primary actions are their legs, whilst everything else is the secondary action, including the swinging arms, bobbing head, and facial movements. As the secondary action is meant to empathise the primary action, both actions must be visible to the viewer. However, the secondary action should never dominate the primary action.

Timing:

This principle states that the personality and nature of animation are significantly affected by the number of frames inserted between each main action. For instance, if many drawings are very close together in-between the two primary poses, the motion will be very slow. Whereas if the artist sets the drawings far apart, the action will be very fast. The standard frame rate for movies is 24fps. If one drawing is made for every single frame, 24 drawings per second, that is known as drawing on “ones”. Whereas if one drawing is created for every two frames, that’s known as drawing on “twos”. It’s very common to draw on twos, compared to ones, for several reasons. Firstly, it trims the amount of work in half. Secondly, it makes slow actions appear smoother than drawing every frame because the precision needed to draw in-between two close drawings could cause the animation to look jittery. However, drawing on “ones” is ideal when a swift action needs to be read – for instance, a scramble or a flurry of activity.

Exaggeration:

In animation, all actions, poses, and expressions can all be taken to the next level to increase the viewer’s impact. Making the animation appear more realistic didn’t mean making the physics and proportions more consistent with reality, but instead making the action’s idea or essence more apparent and real. For instance, if a character is angry, make them angrier. Exaggeration doesn’t mean more distorted but more convincing. Exaggeration could be implemented into an action when adding anticipation. When motions are fast, the exaggeration needs to be more significant for the viewer to notice. However, to tackle this, the animator could boost the drawing’s presence by either making it appear on screen longer or making the pose even more extreme.

Solid Drawing:

This animation principle makes sure that forms feel like they are in three-dimensional space with volume, weight, and balance. Animation is easier when able to draw a figure from all angles – which requires knowledge of three-dimensional drawing. For instance, when drawing a line on a sphere, it needs to follow the contour of the sphere’s surface because a straight line would instantly make the circle appear flat. Regarding 3D animation, we need to avoid “twinning”, which occurs when a character’s arms, legs, and other paired features do the same thing. Instead, animators need to animate the character to show that it has weight and maintains its balance in a 3D environment. For instance, make the character lean over to one side or put one hand on the hips.

Appeal:

Appeal refers to the appearance of the character/object you’re animating. On most occasions, the characters being animated need to look somewhat pleasing. They should have some charismatic aspect to like about them. Appeal doesn’t necessarily always mean being good-looking. For instance, it could also mean interesting. A villain should be likeable in the sense that they’re interesting to look at. One problem with this is that everyone has a different standard for what is appealing. However, giving the character a dynamic design can significantly boost its appeal. There are three steps to doing that.

1. Variety of shapes – Instead of re-using the same shape for each character, experiment with different shapes as there’s no limit to the spectrum of crazy configurations that characters can have. All great character designs begin with a clear shape.
2. Proportions – Artists play around with the proportion of a character, often magnifying the things we find interesting, and shrinking the things we may find ugly and dull. For instance, they may enlarge the head, eyes, and hands whilst shrinking the body. Identifying the aspect of a character that defines their personality and enlarging it could create a more appealing design.
3. Keep it simple – Too much information on a character could over-complicate the character and make it more difficult to animate. We need to be aware that there’s a difference between drawing for illustration and animation. We need to pick and choose what details to keep with animated characters as they will be re-drawn multiple times.