The 12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles are a written 'laws' for animation, they are the keys and vital elements that make interesting, entertaining and engaging animation. This rule set has been around for decades and even the earliest animations abides to them, although animations do not have to feature all of them and certainly not all at once.

 

These principles are used by animators to given informed decisions on how to animate a character or scene, and although some are more specific to actual animation techniques the later in the list are ones that are more generalized with the principles such as timing, staging and secondary action (to realize and to implement weight and realism into objects/characters).

 

I feel that the most important are these more generalized terms due to them having a wider appeal than that of some of the others, for example some animations aimed at a higher age demographic would not feature much if any squash and stretch as they are very stylized/cartoon-ish and films aimed at adults may not want that cartoon-ish feel to the action/animation.

Done