The 12 basic principles of animation

1. Squash and stretch

Squash and Stretch is the most important principle of animation. It gives drawn objects a sense of weight and flexability, it can be applied to many things from a bouncy ball to a human face. If it is done to an exagurated degre it can have a comical effect. In realistic animation however the key part of this is that an objects volume does not change.

< This picture uses Squash and Stretch on the sails eyes to make them droopy and make the snail look saddened

2. Anticipation

Anticipation is used to make the audience prepared for an action and to make the action appear more realistic. An example of this would be if someone is going to jump they have to bend their knees first. You can also use this in a comical way if you make the audience anticipate something then make something different happen.

< It is used here to make the audience anticipate the snail getting squished by the falling object.

3.  Staging

Staging is used to make the audience know where they are supposed to be looking. If done well you can distract the audience from one thing to make it more of a surprise or you can switch the audiences attention form one thing to another at any time you wish.

< Staging is used here to make you look at the front half of the snail, sometimes staging can be something like a simple closte up then if you zoom out they will still be looking at the thing that had the close up.

4. Straight ahead action/Pose to pose

These are two different approaches to the actual drawring process. 'Straight ahead action' is when you draw out each frame from the begining untill the end. 'Pose to pose' is when you draw a few key frames and fill in the rest later. 'Straight ahead action' creates a more smooth flow and is good for realistic action sequences, although it is hard to keep the proportions and to create convincing poses along the way. 'Pose to pose' works better for dramatic or emotional scenes where composition and relation to the surroundings are of greater importance. A combination of the two techniques is often used. In the pictures above is an example of the first two slides drawn in a 'straight ahead action' animation. There is hardly any difference between the two slides but if this was a 'pose to pose' animation the first two slides drawn would look entirely different from each other.

5. Follow through and overlapping action

These closely related techniques help render movement more realistic, and give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics. 'Follow through' means that separate parts of a body will continue moving after the character has stopped. 'Overlapping action' is the tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates. A third technique is 'drag', where a character starts to move and parts of him take a few frames to catch up. These parts can be inanimate objects like clothing or the antenna on a car, or parts of the body, such as arms or hair. In the picture to the left there is an examle of Follow through and overlapping action, although the snail has stopped it's eyes are still behind and have yet to catch up.

6. Slow in and slow out

The movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more frames near the beginning and end of a movement, and fewer in the middle. This principle goes for characters moving between two extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up.

< Here is a short animation i created showing an example of slow in, the snail takes time to speed up.

7. Arcs
Most human and animal actions occur along an arched trajectory, and animation should reproduce these movements for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines.

< Here is an exaple using an arc, this one shows the snails neck bending to face the audience.

8. Secondary action

Adding secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life and can help support the main action. The important thing about secondary actions is that they emphasize instead of taking attention away from the main action. If it does take the attention from the main action then it is better to leave it out.

< The main action in this shot is the snail moving, the secondary action is the object falling above it.
9. Timing

Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action which translates to the speed of the action on film. Correct timing can make objects appear to abide the law of physics. It is also iportant in establishing a characters mood, emotion and reactions. It can also show aspects of a characters personality.

In the short animation above (in section 6. slow in and slow out) there is fast timing but it also makes the snail look like itis abiding the law of friction.

10. Exaggeration

Exaggeration is an effect that can be used to a comic effect by exaggerating parts of a character or object. Exaggeration is not used as much in realistic animation compared to how much it is used in a more cartoony animation. If a scene contais a lot of exaggeration it is important to make sure that there is a balance of how exagerated things are. In this picture the exaggeration is on the head of the snail to show an exagerated expression (although in this picutre the expression  isnt that clear.. it's supposted to be shock by the way)

11. Solid drawring

The priciple of solid drawring is taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. To do this you have to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow.

12. Appeal

Appeal in a cartoon character is what charisma is to an actor. A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic, villains can also be appealing, the important thing is that the viewer feels the character has a sense of life in it and is interesting. There are many ways to make a character connect with the audience better, for likeable caracters a symmetrical or baby-like face tends to work.

Information gathered from: here
Pictures taken by me
Gif created using gickr.com