Reflect on the 12 Principles of Animation

•Squash and Stretch

Squash and Stretch is the most important principle that is vital to master over the other principles. The idea of Squash and Stretch is to give an impression of weight and volume to a character as it walks and moves. Furthermore, the volume of the character should be equivalent during the course of the animation.

 

•Staging

Staging is basically the setting around the character whilst the animation is taking place. It all depends on how the cameras are set up and how it will move to make the audience look in certain places. Different shots are important to consider here as well such as extreme close up, long shot, medium shot etc. The character and the setting should work together in order to reduce confusion. Also there shouldn’t be too many things that are happening at the same time whereas this can also confuse the audience and make the audience not see sense of the animation.

 

•Anticipation

Anticipation is very important during an animation too. This helps the audience to determine that some sort of action is going to take place. For example, if the character is going to jump or make a sudden movement they should be prepared to make the animation more interesting. This gives the character real life features and it personifies the character because it is given real human characteristics.

 

•Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose

Straight Ahead is basically using the drawing and moving the animation frame by frame. With Straight Ahead it is easy to lose proportion and size in the animation because it is just following the drawing. However it is an advantage when the animator wants to create a scene with sudden movements and a lot of action. Pose to Pose however is the opposite. This is where the drawings are done by the animator themselves drawing out each pose in the animation. Personally I feel this is better than Straight Ahead because it is easier to show more character emotion and gives the audience a better feel of what is happening in the animation. Furthermore unlike Straight Ahead, this controls the proportion and size which makes a better animation.

 

•Follow Through & Overlapping

Basically, this is how the main parts of the body move first and other parts catch up to it after a few frames such as the characters clothes or the characters body and legs, both parts of the arms etc. Overlapping is if the direction the character is going in is changed, the hair for instance would go with the character as soon as it changes. It would catch up a few frames later to make it look more realistic. Follow through on the other hand is basically when the character has come to a standstill, not everything will be stopped together. Certain parts of the characters clothing or body parts would take time to stop and wouldn’t stop all at once.

 

•Slow In & Slow Out

Slow in & Slow Out is basically how quick or slow the character moves. This is used to make the animation look more real and life like. This is a good principle to use because it gives the more real feeling to the animation and makes it look a lot smoother.

 

•ARCS

Arcs are used in animations to make the animation look more realistic and more interesting to watch. They are used to make movements more smooth and accurate rather than stiff movements which aren’t life like for a human. For example, when a character moves their arm, the hand naturally follows with fingers moving a little, also when a character moves their head the eyes follow naturally moving in the same direction as the head.

 

•Secondary Action

Secondary action is basically more than one thing moving at once to make the animation look believable. In addition, it would look less realistic if one thing was moving in the animation only such as if the legs were walking without the body or the arms following.

 

•Timing

Timing is a very important factor throughout animation. Just by adding different times into the animation with a few key frames apart some more than others, it can add a whole lot more emotion and give the animation more feeling. It is easy to change the timing by manipulating them in the key frames also by using the graph editor which allows you to manipulate the key frames to make them longer or shorter or even to move or rotate or scale certain parts at certain times.

 

•Exaggeration

Exaggeration is not only to do with movements or action within an animation. It is also to do with exaggeration on facial features e.g. eye movements, mouth movements, nose twitching etc. If exaggeration is used in a walk cycle or an arm swing it can add much more emphasis to the animation and can make it look much more realistic.

 

•Solid Drawings

Solid Drawing is very important in animation because if the animator has grasped the concept of how the body is formed and the anatomical side of the body it will make the modelling and the rigging much more detailed and enhanced. Therefore it is necessary to know how the body is formed and joint together. It would be a good idea to practise drawings and getting to know the body inside out including the skeleton and the muscles and the body itself.

 

 

•Appeal

Every single character in animation has a certain appeal. This could be a heroic appeal or a villain appeal. No character in animation doesn’t have no appeal at all. All of the principles come in tide with Appeal because if one of them isn’t done correctly and stands out, it will give the animation less appeal and realism to the audience.

 

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