12 Principles of Animation

The 12 basic animations principles were introduced by Disney Animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Based in the work of Disney from the 1930s onwards, the principles make an effort of producing more realistic animations; its main purpose is to produce and create the illusion of physical laws into characters. Following a recount of the principles (Vanhemert, 2014)

1. Timing and Spacing: The illusion of moving in object animation is created through Timing and spacing following the laws of physics. Timing refers to the number of frames in-between two poses. The spacing refers to how those individual frames are placed (hallucinationrain, 2014).

2. Squash and Stretch: The purpose of this principle is to give sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be easily apply in a bouncing ball but also for more complex objects as human face musculature. The example shows how A is a ball bouncing with a rigid, non-dynamic movement. In example B the ball is "squashed" at impact, and "stretched" during fall and rebound(Ratner, 2013). 

3. Anticipation: This principle is used to prepare the audience for an action which is about to happen,it gives to the movement a belivable feeling. A common example is a beisball player throwing the ball, bending his knees and preparing all the body to the pitch (EVL, no date). 

4. Ease-In and Ease-Out: All objects or persons which moves, comes to a stop. Therefore it needs to be a time for acceleration and deceleration. Without ease in and ease out or slow in slow out, movements become very unnatural and robotic (EVL, no date).

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action: Follow through is the idea that individual body parts will continue moving after the character has come to a stop. Overlapping action means that different parts of the body will move at different times. For example, in the first case when a character stop walking the body part don´t stop inmediately the arms may continue forward, in the same way in the second case if a character raises their arm up to wave, the shoulder will move first, and then the arm, etc.(EVL, no date)

6. Arcs: Real-life objects normally moves in some type of arcing motion, and in animation following this ensure the animation is smooth and moves in a realistic way. An exception of it is mechanical movement which follows a straight line form (EVL, no date).

7. Exaggeration: it is used to push movements further to add more appeal to an action. is normally used in cartoons,and incorporated more restrictively in realistic actions. Whether is the case it should be employ in an animation(hallucinationrain, 2014). 

8. Solid Drawing: It means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, like volume and weight,thinking about the balance and anatomy in a pose. Despite now animators not only relied in their drawings is important to have the drawing skill and undestand the basics concepts of it(EVL, no date).

9. Appeal: In character design it correspond to create thinking to connect with viewers feelings, making it interesting for the audience(Vanhemert, 2014).

10. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose: Straight ahead means creating each pose in a linear approach, one animation after another. Pose to Pose is more methodical and recalls to create and action from the key poses(Ratner, 2013).

11. Secondary Action: Secondary actions gives a scene of life, and can help to support the main action. An example is a person walking -primary action- who can simultaneously swing his arms as a secondary action (Ratner, 2013). 

12. Staging: It refers to the background and foreground prepared for placing the characters, lights, space, camera angle, etc.(Ratner, 2013). 

Based in Principles of Animation, I  did some examples of them in the folowing exercises:

References:

Ratner, P. (2013). 3-D human modeling and animation. 3rt edition. Wiley: John Wiley & Son.

hallucinationrain (2014). Principles of animation- exaggeration & timing [Online]. Available https://hallucinationrain.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/principles-of-animation-exaggeration-timing/. [Accessed:08^th November 2014]

EVL (no date). Follow Through and Overlapping Action. Electronic visualization Laboratory, EVL [Online]. Available https://www.evl.uic.edu/ralph/508S99/contents.html [Accessed:08^th November 2014] 

Vanhemert, K. (2014) Disney's 12 principles of Animation. Wired [Online] Available http://www.wired.com/2014/05/12-principles-of-animation/ [Accessed:08^th November 2014]