Twelve Principles Of Animation

These principles are by the "Nine Old Men." Disney, back in the day, had nine aged and experienced people who wrote a few rules on animation before they started to bite the dust. While it's not the best list (in the opinion of many) it's an excellent starting point. Each of these should be explained seperately, but I don't want to kill you with information overload.

In no particular order:
-Arcs
-Timing
-Staging
-Followthrough and Overlapping Action
-Secondary Action
-Straight-Ahead VS Pose-To-Pose Animation
-Exaggeration
-Slow-ins and Slow-outs
-Anticipation
-Solid Drawing
-Appeal
-Squash and Stretch

Everything move in arcs. Hold your arm out and swing it up and down. It's not going from the first position to the second in a straight line -- the center point of the swing has the hand further out. It's moving in an arc. EVERYTHING moves in arcs. If it doesn't, things are going to shrink and grow oddly and it won't look realistic. Your arcs in this animation work well.

Anticipation is when something stores kinetic energy beore it does an action. Leaning back before standing out of a chair, pulling back before punching something, crouching before jumping. Anticipation happens in real life, but it's even more important in animation. (The Exaggeration principle pays a visit here) Animation lies a lot in order to tell the truth, just like art in general. It looks like the worm actually squishes down a bit before he jumps, intentional or not.

Slow-in and slow-outs. To illustrate this principle, let's use the example of a bouncing ball. It's thrown into the air, and as it travels up it slows down. When it reaches the top of its peak it's going very slow, and then it speeds up until it hits the ground and bounces back. Then it slows down again, and etc.

Here's an animation of the arc of a ball:

And here's the frames overlayed:

The point is this: The ball slows at the top of the arc as its direction changes. Direction changes should slow in and out. To make something slower you add more frames.

Unfinished