Anyone that deals with animation as at least once heard about this principles: they are the building blocks of animation and since they are very versatile they have different application as well. However, paradoxically they can lead to a lack of creativity if followed to much. They can be found in the book “Illusion of Life” (1981) by Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston, two of the most influential animators at Walt Disney Animation; they had an important role in the production of Disney’s classics such as Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia and Snow White in what is often referred as “The Golden era of Animation”. The principles are:

Squash and stretch: determines how cartoonish or naturalistic the character animation is: the more squashed and stretched a character is the more cartoonish it will animate.

Anticipation: before moving into a direction it’s better to create an anticipation, the pose before the main action. It gives the audience time to read the action.

Staging: a correct staging is able to communicate the character and story elements.

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose: are two different approaches to animation. the straight ahead is the method where animators create poses in sequence, while in the pose to pose the first and the last keys are created and then the intermediate keys are blocked in and after the breakdowns which might be a more controlled process but it can lead to a stiffer animation.

Follow Through and Overlapping Action: part of the character or subject moves at a different rate because they have different weight and different properties

Slow in and Slow Out: an object or a character in animation start their movements out more slowly, then picks up speed and finishes with deceleration.

Arcs: this principle has different meanings. It could refer to the structure of a character or the result of when it moves around. A clean arcs leads to an appealing animation. Arcs are involved in may aspects like performance (motion) or in details (hands or feet or head), or at the roots of a character.

Secondary Action: is anything responding to the primary action which is the body and the character or anything active in the scene.

Timing & Spacing: timing is the frame numbers assigned to the keys of the actions determining how an action is fast or slow while spacing refers to the position of the in between and breakdowns frames between the first and last frames, the extremes. In 3D animation a visual representation of this principle is in the Graphic Editor.

Terminology:

keys – main pose.

extreme – in-betweens.

breakdowns- details.

Exaggeration: it pushes an animation or a pose beyond its logic limits.

Solid Drawing: makes the drawing looks three dimensional and believable with volume, weight and balance.

Appeal : it is referring more with charisma or charm rather than the aesthetic itself. It deals with the visual experience, so it can also concern the design in correlation with the movement and the personality.

They apply physical laws of motion for the sake of animation: they offer drawn characters the ability to move and act, but they fall short of meeting the interactive motion requirements of modern user interfaces: they were first formulated from the 2D experience when 3D Animation of modern age was not even conceived. Many animators throughout the years tried to build from this list adjusting it to their needs and observations: an example is Dermot O’ Connor’s “21 Foundations of Animation” which can be applied to digital animation. Some of this new principles are the following:

• Strong Design: crucial when using simple geometries as a starting point for character designs.
• Acting and pantomime: a character is able to express its personality and emotions mutely by gestures.
• Keys and breakdowns: keys are the main poses in a scene, establishing the most important actions and emotions the breakdown loosen up the motions between the scene creating vitality in the movement.
• Silhouette: able to communicate character’s emotions and actions.
• Counterpose: the rotation of the hips and shoulders relatives to one another (important in walk cycle).

Animation in relation to Physics an application of the principles

We can distinguish three main approaches to the laws of physics depending on the filmography we are dealing with:

• Movie physics: the physics applied to the animation here changes in relation to the narrative choice of the director and the storytelling: sci-fi and fantasy movies tend to push reality physics more.
• Cartoon physics: even though the animation seems not to follow the common physics laws, cartoons has an inherent logic that dictates the physics rules of that world and can be used as a source of comedy such as gravity which can be turned on and off when it is the right comic moment.

The principles of animation are the result of an accurate observation of the real world physics and a well animated film is the output of these observations.

The animation principles guide us when we make technique and performance choices in our work. They should be considered as guidelines for creating an appealing animation engaging and fine to watch. The following is a general overview of the principles and their meaning.

Squash ans stretch

Is considered to be the most important principle since is capable of giving characters and objects a sense of flexibility and life. This principle ca be applied to object squishing into something but a they move and deform their volume stays the same such as the saucing ball animation in week 1. However this principle may be used it helps adding to the illusion of life.

Anticipation

It helps preparing the character and the audience for the action: it often means moving the character a small amount in the opposite direction to that of the main action. Is a useful tool in fine-tuning performance choices. This principle can stress the difference between a thinking, planning and intelligent character and a character simply reacting to the world around him.

Staging

This comprehend a big area including framing the camera to best capture the action to plan the animation to best communicate the motion, the character arc, the story. It helps to create the scene. In order to start, finding reference videos or photos of the animation can give cues to the beginning of the work. During this phase, staging means how to plan the poses and layout of the scene are going to show the motion. While programming the scene is key maintaining a high level of communication throughout the shot: thinking about the entire action, adjusting the camera, finding the right balance in the composition of the scene, all these elements can improve the staging of the scene. When the animation stage is finished, is important to establish where the audience’s eyes are going to be looking throughout the shot. Some decisions to influence this are: lighting, effects, and editing.

Straight ahead/ Pose to pose

This two principles describe the two basic approaches to blocking in a piece of animation. Straight ahead: animation creates the base animation by posing the animation by posing the animation in a frame, then moving forward one or more frames and posing again.

Pose to pose: animators create the key poses and after create the key poses and after create other poses in between those poses.

They both have cons and pros.

Straight ahead should be used when the action is very mechanical or physical: the ability to perceive the motion as you frame through the animation in slow motion is better.

Pose to pose is for character performances: the key poses a character hits are going to tell the story since that without a strong sense of the characters body language the emotional story gets lost.

Overlapping action /Follow through

Overlap instills a fluidity to character animation. When added to the characters gestures, overlap makes the animation feel like the character has a natural flexible quality: it has a major impact on the performance of a character.

With follow-through an animator can show a sense of weight with the character : the heavier the weight, the more energy it will take to stop the character and using the follow through emphasise it. (offsetting the curves in the graph editor is a common trick)

Slow in and Slow out

It refers to the spacing of the keys when an action comes to a stop or changes direction or even when a character transition from pose to pose: this principle refers to the fact that we typically decelerate objects as they come to a stop rather than have them to come to a dead halt instantly (slow in) and also to gradually accelerate objects as they begin to move and not have them instantly be at full speed (slow out of a pose). The graph editor is a great way to visualise the principle through the curves and tangents. And a Motion Trail helps to edit the animation motion path in the scene in Maya.

Arcs

Most natural actions are following an arched path. It helps avoiding a linear path and mechanical, robotic performances: we should consider the whole body arc and track it to determine the forces of the body. However the Arc principle can also be applied to other elements on the animation since is scalable.

Secondary action

This principle can add a nice level of meaning to the whole scene. We are always occupying ourselves with more than one thing at a time and constantly multitasking. It can add life like elements to the scene: are actions that support the main action of a character or object. They are used to emphasize or accentuate the primary action, but they must be used carefully or they might take away from the main action.

Timing

Is the very foundation of animation: time is used to convey meaning in a scene other than accurately portray motion in realistic scenes since it helps the audience to emote with a character and it can be used to tell a deeper story by edit the time they make to happen.

Exaggeration

When the core idea in a scene is found there should be figure out the best way to exaggerate the message and strengthen it.

Solid drawing

the construction of a character involves simple shapes combined together with clean, meaningful lines. There should be taken in consideration the line of the action, the force of the pose and the weight of a character, perspective and a sense of the characters’ volume has to be consistent. In CGI Animation Maya is really helping in taking care of these aspects of the model: the animator should not distort the body or their face or even the rig (goes off-model), the body sections should be working together in harmony.

Appeal

All the principals combine together to make appeal which is the goal of animation. For instance Twinning is a major issue in posing since in nature nothing is ever perfectly symmetrical so creating an asymmetrical pose could generate more appeal. Or during staging this aspect should be well thought out, the silhouette of the pose should be strong, without limbs lost within the silhouette of the body.

Step by step workflow to employ when creating a shot from start to finish which could differ in size or time but can be broke down in the following way:

Thumbnail very pushed poses to the model;

the body movement should look good before facial animation;

the movement should be polished but before the reference should be used to compare the dynamic.

Reference book

Naas, P., n.d. How to cheat in Maya 2017.