12 Principles of Animation

Hello everyone! 

In this post, I will be sharing with you about the 12 principles of animation.

Everything needs principles, so does animation. But why is it important to have principles for creating animation?

1. To show the audience the realism and believability of the characters created.

2. To create consistency and as guide for animators.

3. As a visual communication that can convey desired messages, emotions, and storytelling.

4. To reduce time-consuming by providing techniques.

5. To get better quality animations.

Let’s jump into it, what are the 12 principles of animation?

1. Squash and Stretch 
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight ahead or Pose to pose
5. Follow through and Overlapping action
6. Slow in and Slow out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid drawing
12. Appeal

These principles of animation were develop by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Frank Thomas (center) with Ollie Johnston and their respective wives.

To understand further about these principles, I will explain more how this every principle is done by using my favourite animation as examples. One of my all-time favourite animations (Since I was a kid) is Tom and Jerry.

For Squash and Stretch: This principle involves stretching an object to certain extend when it moves or squashing it when it comes to a stop point. For example, this is the scene where Tom collides with the ceiling, his body is squash (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Tom's body is squash.

For Anticipation: This principle involves showing a small movement or more into showing an action that telling the main action was about to come. For example, this is when Jerry about to save Tuffy (Figure 3)

Figure 3: Jerry is about to save Tuffy.

For Staging: This principle is about showing an action clearly, usually just by moving camera angle into certain view, so that it shows the reaction of the character clearly. For example, the scene when duckling is too eager telling a story with all his reaction to Jerry (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The animator chooses to show this angle to show those eager reactions by the duckling.

For Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose: Straight Ahead Action involves drawing each frame in sequence, from first to the end pose, frame by frame. Pose-to-Pose involves planning key poses, which mean animator draw the beginning and end pose frame first and then drawing the in-between frames. For example, the scene where Jerry and Tuffy marching, we can see by looking at their feet movement, there are different action use during the drawing process (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Jerry and Tuffy marching movement.

For Follow Through and Overlapping Action: Follow Through refers to the actions that continue even after the main action has stopped. Overlapping Action is the result of different parts of an object moving at different times. For example, the scene while tom was sleeping, the milk on his whisker dripping down making his whisker continue to move downward (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Milk dripping down from Tom's whisker.

For Slow In and Slow Out: These principles show gradual acceleration or deceleration of an action as objects in the real world don't start and stop so sudden. For example, the time when Tom was about to be rolled by a bowling ball, he reacts and slowly start to run his feet but still at the same place before he actually runaway (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Tom slowly starts to run at the same place before actually runaway.

For Arcs: This principle make animation to look smoother as animator create an object or character movements follow an arched path rather than a straight line. For example, the scene when Jerry was in a piano, his body arc when he was moved by those hammers (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Jerry moved by hammers in piano.

For Secondary Action: Secondary actions are additional movements that support the main action. For example, the scene when Jerry trying to make Tom to look into his hand, at the same time, he punches him in the eye (Figure 9).  

Figure 9: Jerry punches Tom while he was busy looking into Jerry's hand.

For Timing: This principle is crucial, it involves of using spacing of an action and appropriate speed to create preferable effect. For example, one of comedic timing was the scene when Jerry thought Tom was a wall (figure 10).

Figure 10: Tom satisfied expression when Jerry thought he was a wall.

For Exaggeration: To make the animation more appealing and entertaining, this principle push a character to make a dramatic expression and an extreme movement beyond reality. For example, the scene when Tom's eyes come out bigger with heart shape replacing his pupil (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Tom exaggeration expressions

For Solid Drawing: This principle involves giving the illusion of three-dimensional form, like volume and weight to characters and objects in animation. For example, in this scene, it shows Tom's shadow on the floor (Figure 12). 

Figure 12: Tom's shadow on the floor.

For Appeal: This principle simply means to make and create the animation looks appealing, interesting and desirable to audiences. For example, the scene when Tom trying to explode Jerry's place, the evil face on Tom is so appealing but at the same time, Jerry also lighting up explosion behind Tom and this scene make it more interesting (Figure 13).

Figure 13: Different expressions from Tom and Jerry but both appealing and very interesting. 

These are just few examples of the scenes from Tom and Jerry for each principle.

Well, that's all for this post. See you again on the next post. Au revoir!

Love, Peach💕