BASIC PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
There
are basic 12 Principles
of Animation:
1.
Anticipation:
An anticipation pose
or drawing is a preparation for the main action of an animated scene, as
distinct from the action and the reaction.
For
example, a man preparing to
run fast would crouch down, "gathering like a spring" for the main
action. This is called the anticipation for the main action. Equally, a golfer
making a swing has to anticipate the swing by swinging the club back first, just
as a baseball pitcher must "wind up" before throwing the
ball. This was a technique was borrowed from the theatre, and was
important in holding the audience's attention. The audience might not know
exactly why a character was doing something, but they would at
least know what he was doing .
Anticipation: A baseball player
making a pitch prepares for the action by moving
his arm back. After the anticipation comes the action and
the reaction.
2.
Squash and stretch: The principle is based on
observation that only stiff objects
remain inert during motion, while objects that are not stiff,
although retaining overall volume, tend to change shape in an extent that
depends on inertia and elasticity of
the different parts of the moving object. To illustrate the principle, a
half-filled flour sack dropped on the floor, or stretched out by its corners,
was shown to be retaining its overall volume all the time.
Illustration of the "squash
and stretch"-principle:
Example A shows
a ball bouncing with a rigid, non-dynamic movement. In example B the
ball is "squashed" at impact, and "stretched" during fall
and rebound.
3.
Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose:
These are two different approaches
to the actual drawing process. "Straight ahead action" means drawing
out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, while "pose to
pose" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in
the intervals later.] "Straight
ahead action" creates a more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement, and is
better for producing realistic action sequences. On the other hand, it is hard
to maintain proportions, and to create exact, convincing poses along the way.
"Pose to pose" works better for dramatic or emotional scenes, where
composition and relation to the surroundings are of greater importance. A
combination of the two techniques is often used.
4.
Follow through and overlapping action:
Follow
Through and Overlapping Action are closely related techniques which, when
applied to animation, can help to render movement more realistically, and help
to give the impression that characters follow the laws
of physics.
The animators,
keen to make their work feel more convincing, developed the concepts of
"Follow Through" and "Overlapping Action", though the
concepts were so closely related that they were not always easy to distinguish.
Frank Thomas and Ollie
Johnston identified five areas of motion where these principles would apply:
1. A character might have a coat or long ears, and these parts would keep
moving once the figure had stopped moving. The ears, or coat, would
"follow through" even after the main action had stopped.
2. Bodies in motion do not move all at once, rather different parts of a body
may move at different speeds. Therefore, as one part of the body stops, another
part (such as an arm), might overlap or follow through the main action, slowly
settling to a stop.
3. Loose flesh, such as a dog's floppy jowls, might move at a slower speed than
the more solid parts of the character. These parts might drag behind the main
action.
4. The completion of an action - how the action "follows through" - is
often more important than the action itself.
5. The "moving hold". A character might come to a complete halt, but
the fleshy parts might follow through the main action in order to convey weight
and believability.
5.
Staging:
Staging is the process of selecting, designing, adapting to,
or modifying the performance space for a play or film. This includes the use or absence of stagecraft elements
as well as the structure of the stage and its components. While from a critical
standpoint, "staging" can refer to the spectacle that a play presents
in performance, the term is also frequently used interchangeably with the term
"blocking", referring to how the performers are placed and moved
around the stage. Many audience members may believe that performers move
spontaneously on the stage, but blocking/staging is rarely spontaneous. Major
points of blocking are often set down by the playwright, but blocking is
usually done by the director, sometimes in collaboration with performers and
designers.
6.
Slow In and Slow Out:
The
movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate
and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more
drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasizing the extreme
poses, and fewer in the middle. This principle goes for characters moving between two extreme
poses, such as sitting down and standing up, but also for inanimate, moving
objects, like the bouncing ball in the above illustration.
7.
Arc:
Most natural action tends to follow
an arched trajectory,
and animation should adhere to this principle by following implied
"arcs" for greater realism. This technique can be applied to a moving
limb by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory.
The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines.
As an object's speed or momentum
increases, arcs tend to flatten out in moving ahead and broaden in turns. In
baseball, a fastball would tend to move in a straighter line than other
pitches; while a figure skater moving at top speed would be unable to turn as
sharply as a slower skater, and would need to cover more ground to complete the
turn.
An object in motion that moves out
of its natural arc for no apparent reason will appear erratic rather than
fluid. For example, when animating a pointing finger, the animator should be
certain that in all drawings in between the two extreme poses, the fingertip
follows a logical arc from one extreme to the next. Traditional animators tend
to draw the arc in lightly on the paper for reference, to be erased later.
8.
Secondary Action:
Adding
secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to
support the main action. A person walking can simultaneously swing his arms or
keep them in his pockets, speak or whistle, or express emotions through facial
expressions. The important thing about
secondary actions is that they emphasize, rather than take attention away from,
the main action. If the latter is the case, those actions are better left out.[25] For
example, during a dramatic movement, facial expressions will often go
unnoticed. In these cases it is better to include them at the beginning and the
end of the movement, rather than during.
9.
Exaggeration:
Exaggeration
is an effect especially useful for
animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in
cartoons.[12] The
level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular
style, like a caricature or the style of a specific artist. The classical
definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney, was to remain true to reality,
just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form. Other
forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or surreal, alterations in
the physical features of a character; or elements in the storyline itself. It
is important to employ a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration. If
a scene contains several elements, there should be a balance in how those
elements are exaggerated in relation to each other, to avoid confusing or
overawing the viewer.
10.
Solid drawing:
The principle of solid drawing
means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, or giving them
volume and weight. The
animator needs to be a skilled artist and has to understand the basics of
three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc. For
the classical animator, this involved taking art classes and doing sketches
from life. One thing in particular that
Johnston and Thomas warned against was creating "twins": characters
whose left and right sides mirrored each other, and looked lifeless. Modern-day
computer animators draw less because of the facilities computers give them, yet
their work benefits greatly from a basic understanding of animation principles ,
and their additions to basic computer animation.
11. Appeal:
Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds
to what would be called charisma in an actor. A character who is appealing is not
necessarily sympathetic – villains or monsters can also be appealing – the
important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting. There are several tricks for making a
character connect better with the audience; for likable characters a
symmetrical or particularly baby-like face tends to be effective. A complicated or hard to read face
will lack appeal, it may more accurately be described as 'captivation' in the
composition of the pose, or the character design.
12.
Timing and spacing:
timing and spacing is really one of the simplest principles of
animation in theory, it really is the building block for your animation,
because without good timing and spacing it’s hard to find a good animation
underneath.
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