The 12 Principles of Animation!

The 12 Principles of Animation!

The following things are the basics to animation:

• 1 Squash and stretch
• The first and most important principle to animation is definitely this one. With the concept of "squashing and stretching" something in a frame, it gives the human eye the illusion the object is constantly moving. The key is to keep the volume of the object the same through-out each frame, to keep the realism. However, this can be warped or manipulated to create a sense comedic value, or even to create a greater sense of realism. 
• Above is an example of this technique being used.
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• 2 Anticipation
• Anticipation is used to prepare an audience before an action to make it more realistic. For example, when jumping, the body bends its knees and launches itself upwards. This lets the audience know what action the person will be doing from their anticipation.

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• 3 Staging
• Staging is the presentation of an idea so that it is clear what is happening in the frame. This idea can be an action, a personality, a facial or body expression, or a mood. The key is so the idea is made clear to the viewer. For this to be achieved, the main object in the frame must contrast from the background so it stands out most. A good example of this is motion, the way it can move unlike everything else in the particular shot.
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• 4 Straight ahead action and pose to pose
• Straight ahead action is where every single frame of an animation is drawn to create a realistic and smoothly flowing animation. However, it is often hard to maintain proportions, so it is a long, complicated process which takes time. Whereas pose to pose is a technique where only a few  key frames are drawn and the rest are filled in later.
  Straight ahead action is best for creating realism, and pose to pose is best for creating dramatic or emotional scenes.
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• 5 Follow through and overlapping action
• When applied to animation, follow through and overlapping action techniques can help to render movement more realistically, making it more smooth and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics.  "Follow through" means that different parts of a body will keep moving even after the character themselves has stopped. "Overlapping action" is the process for parts of the body to move at different rates (an arm will move on different timing of the head and so on). These both help to create realism in the frames.
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• 6 Slow in and slow out
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• When you move, your body builds up momentum and it takes time for that momentum to build up and to stop. When your body is trying to stop moving it often will cushion that movements halt. When you start running the first step will not have the same speed as when you’re at full throttle. It will also take time for you to slow down. This also applies to subtitle movements, a slight twist of the neck will slowly move at the beginning of the movement and at the end of the movement. A characters movement can be slowed by adding more drawings into the scene.
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• 7 Arcs
• Arcs are what makes movement more fluid in animation, so for this you must make sure track them, whether you're working on computer or paper. Everything in nature moves on an arc, with the few exceptions like insects. 

• 8 Secondary action
• In animation, a secondary action is something that follows up a previous action as a result of the action being made. This helps add emotion or effect to a scene. For example, if a character is upset, they could turn their back to the camera.. whilst they are turning, they put their hand up to their face, to hide how they are feeling. This would add the sympathetic feeling toward the character in question, as you feel sorry for them. 

• 9 Timing
• Each frame has movement, and the timing of it is essential. Treat your scene like music; it needs rhythm. If a large man is in frame, his movements would need to be slow and sluggish, as he has more weight to move, contrastingly, if a skinny man is in frame, he would move fast and fluently as he has less weight to move. 
• Baring this in mind, if you time images correctly, you will successfully manage to portray the illusion of movement. 
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• 10 Exaggeration
• Exaggeration is used in animation when trying to decide whether to be realistic or not by playing with the levels of exaggeration used an animator can achieve this. Exaggeration can be used on the character or elements in the storyline itself... that doesn't just mean distorting the objects or actions, but the animator must choose which properties to exaggerate very carefully. If only one thing is exaggerated then it may stand out too much. If everything is exaggerated then the entire scene may appear too unrealistic, the balance must be right.
   
• 11 Solid drawing
• Solid drawing is taking into account the concepts of three-dimensional vision into a drawing, so that your character looks alive. For example, in this image, we can see Bugs Bunny readying his fists for a fight. This pose looks real,
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• making us believe that this character could actually exist. When you take into account certain angles of perspective, you are able to illustrate in such a way that your character looks real.
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• 12 Appeal
• The properties of a character have to be appealing, whether it's a good sense of humour, or a simple yet cute face, the audience need to engage with a character or they will not want to watch. For example, if a characters arms and legs move in the same way, the movement is restricted and they will not be appealing to watch. You want to make the character interesting but realistic if you want them to appeal to your audience. 
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