“Animation is not the art of drawings that move; it is the art of movements that are drawn.” — Norman McLaren
It’s not enough to just move characters across a screen. To present something in a way that will hold an audience’s attention, animators need to infuse life into their creations. And this isn’t just about willy-nilly movement; it’s about careful, considered design. It’s about building an illusion that strikes a chord emotionally, that keeps the eyes locked on the screen.
Understanding the 12 principles of animation is like the secret passage that makes it easier to create not only animation but also connects stories. These truths were established years ago by champion animators like Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their revolutionary book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, and they continue to be the foundation of animated theory virtually decades later.
Here are 12 principles of animation that, if you know how, will help you create professional-grade content. These are essential to know for both 2D and 3D animation.
What Are the 12 Principles of Animation?
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Squash and Stretch
The squash and stretch is the most important principle of animation. It makes objects and characters look dynamic and lifelike. For example, a bouncing ball squashes when it hits the ground and stretches as it bounces back, showing that it has weight and elasticity. You can also apply this principle to show emotions in characters. For example, you can stretch features to show surprise or happiness.
2D animation services can help you master the art of squash and stretch. They can add smooth, dynamic movement to your projects, making simple ideas into captivating, lifelike visuals that leave a lasting impression.
Why It Matters
Using squash and stretch will help in giving your characters life and add fluidity to the animation. Animation Squash and StretchHow to use squash and stretch to animateFor example, if you are using animation for marketing, apply the principle of squash and stretch to create a brand mascot or character that is more appealing and entertaining.
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Anticipation
Anticipation prepares the audience for an upcoming action, making the primary action more satisfying. For instance, a character might bend their knees before jumping or draw back their fist before throwing a punch. This technique mimics how humans and animals prepare for actions in reality, adding realism to the animation.
To fully bring anticipation to life in your projects, motion graphics services can help you create fluid, dynamic animations that captivate your audience, ensuring every action feels natural and impactful.
Why It Matters
Anticipation gives direction, and, when used correctly, brings focus to or leadership to the larger action, making scoring it more impactful. If you intend to sign up for an animation course, knowing how to handle anticipation will greatly enhance the smoothness and reality of your character animation.
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Staging
Staging, which refers to how we set up the characters, props, and backgrounds in a scene to direct the viewer’s focus to the most critical element. In this case, it could imply placing a character in the foreground or rotating the camera’s perspective so that primary actions are in clearer view.
It’s sort of like setting up blocks for a play. In the spotlight, the actor forms and everything else dissipates into the distance. Just like with live action, staging is very important in animation for directing the story being told and making sure the audience can focus on the main action without confusion.
Why It Matters
Good staging ensures that your animation is clear and that the focus is directed to the most important elements. Whether you’re creating content for educational purposes or producing custom animated videos, staging is essential for emphasizing key messages or actions in a visually engaging way.
To achieve this level of precision and professionalism, explainer video services can assist in crafting animations that highlight your core message, ensuring your audience easily grasps the information being presented.
4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
There are two primary approaches to creating movement in animation:
- Straight Ahead Action: This technique involves drawing each frame of the animation sequentially. It’s a more free-flowing method, where the animator doesn’t know exactly where the animation will end up, leading to more fluid and dynamic movements.
- Pose to Pose: This method involves drawing the key poses first (the start, end, and extreme points) and then filling in the frames in between. Pose to pose is generally more controlled, allowing for more dramatic and impactful movements.
Why It Matters
Both techniques are important depending on the type of animation you’re working on. For example, frame-by-frame animation basics often require straight-ahead action, while keyframe animation usually benefits from pose-to-pose for clarity and consistency. If you’re looking to buy animation software or purchase animation tutorials, understanding when to use each method will improve the precision and flow of your work.
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
In reality, movements don’t make abrupt stops. Follow Through and Overlapping Action demonstrate that once the main action ceases, various body parts still have motion. So, for example, the hair or clothing (or a cape!) might keep moving after a character jumps and lands; These secondary motions help lend an organic, realistic feel to the animation.
Why It Matters
One of them is the overlapping action technique, a device that is key to making characters feel like they are connected to the world around them. These techniques, when adopted either during animation training or simply while availing professional animation services, help your animations feel smooth, authentic, and visually appealing.
6. Slow In and Slow Out
But objects in motion don’t just start and stop abruptly. They gradually speed up and slow down instead, with more frames that are closer to the start and end of the movement. This is called slow in and slow out, which gives some fluid and natural look.
So, for example, if you animate a car accelerating, the animation would have many frames while the car moves slowly, and then fewer frames as it reaches high speed. As it came to a complete stop, the car would once again slow down slowly.
Why It Matters
Slow in and slow out animation helps bring timing to life for natural motion. When you animate for marketing purposes, this rule ensures that your character design and animation are smooth and professional.
7. Arcs
Humans and animals hardly ever travel in straight lines. Most movements are arcs, which a curved line that connects two points. For example, if a character swings a sword, the path of the sword’s movement will follow an arc so the motion looks smoother. Even small motions, like blinking or waving, tend to follow curved paths.
Why It Matters
As a rule, most movement in animation should follow arcs, so that movement feels fluid, and not mechanical and unnatural. When creating lifelike character movement in your animation, arcs are an ”essential element” that adds to realism.
8. Secondary Action
Secondary action refers to supporting movements that complement the primary action and help convey more depth and personality to a character. For example, when a character raises their arm to wave, the character’s clothing might ripple, or their facial expression may change.
Why It Matters
Secondary actions make the animation more engaging and multi-dimensional. If you’re planning to hire a 2D animator or get animation certification, mastering secondary action helps create rich and detailed animations.
9. Timing
Timing is the pace at which the animation progresses. The more frames used, the slower the action, and fewer frames make the action faster. Proper timing is essential for portraying the weight and speed of the objects in your animation. For example, a heavy object will take longer to move compared to a lightweight one, requiring more frames to show its motion.
Why It Matters
Good timing improves the realism of your animation and helps convey the emotion behind it. Whether you’re animating for advertising or creating motion graphics principles, timing is essential to ensure the right pacing and emotional tone.
10. Exaggeration
Exaggeration is used to make actions or expressions larger than life, heightening the emotional impact or adding humor to the animation. For example, if a character is surprised, their eyes might bulge dramatically, or if they fall, they might stretch midair.
Why It Matters
Exaggeration amplifies the impact of key moments and can help inject humor or dramatic flair into your animation. If you’re looking to create fluid motion or animated storytelling strategies, exaggeration can enhance emotional resonance.
11. Solid Drawing
Solid drawing ensures that your characters have volume and weight in a three-dimensional space. Animators use solid drawing to ensure that the characters’ proportions and shapes stay consistent across different angles and poses. Characters that are drawn with dimensionality feel more realistic and believable.
Why It Matters
Solid drawing is crucial for creating lifelike animations that feel grounded in the world around them. If you want to get premium animation tools or access animation certification, mastering solid drawing techniques will help you create visually appealing and consistent animations.
12. Appeal
Appeal is about making characters charming, engaging, and memorable. It’s not just about physical attractiveness but also about creating characters with intriguing personalities and distinctive features. Characters with strong appeal draw the viewer in and make them care about what happens next.
Why It Matters
Whether you’re working on animated storytelling strategies or character design, appeal is essential for making characters resonate with your audience. It’s crucial to ensure that your characters stand out, especially if you’re aiming to order custom animated videos or create animations for marketing.
Why Is It Essential to Learn the 12 Principles of Animation?
Animation is more than just taking the drawings and making them move. It’s about generating feelings, staging narratives, and expressing meaning through movement. Regardless of whether it’s film, marketing videos, games, or even educational tools, the 12 principles of animation are a roadmap to sharpening your animation to connect deeply with your audience.
It is the animator’s job to know how and when to use these principles. An animation of a simple ball bouncing seems easy, but just by using squash and stretch and timing, the animations can become so real that it almost seems like the ball has a personality of its own.
Consider the type of stylized animations, you’ve seen them in Disney classics such as The Lion King, where the movement feels almost overly smooth, organic, and purposeful. That’s the alchemy these principles work.
How to Apply Squash and Stretch in Animation
Squash and stretch is one of the most important principles to add weight and flexibility to your animation. It adds more dimension to your characters and things, making them feel more real and corporeal.
For example, consider how a character reacts to jumping or falling. When they reach the ground, their physicality squashes (“squash”) then stretches (“stretch”) when they rebound through the atmosphere. At its best, the technique can express weight and elasticity, lending your characters more credence and believability.
Example:
And Simba’s face in The Lion King is a great example of squash and stretch. His face stretches in revulsion and squashes as he shudders when he first tastes a bug. That exaggerated motion just adds so much more emotion to it and makes it so much more relatable and funny.
How Does Anticipation Work In Your Animation?
One of the most valuable techniques in animation, anticipation prepares the audience for potential actions to come. Without it, the movement seems abrupt and wrong, a surprise that thwarts the rhythm of the story.
They might be squatting, just before jumping, for example, or wind up their arm just before throwing a punch. The moment of “preparation” is key to setting up expectations for the audience and rewarding them with greater satisfaction for the action to come.
Example:
(The scene in Tarzan where the character pauses before swinging from a vine primes the viewer with anticipation for the coming action.
Importance of Staging in Animation
Staging is how you place characters, props, and the camera to guide the viewer’s attention to the most critical aspects of a scene. Well-staged animation remains focused, ensuring the message is clear.
In staging, you arrange the elements of the frame like a dance, with the most important action in the spotlight. Too much action or too many characters in a scene can confuse the viewer, so it’s helpful to keep the focus tight.
Example:
The Lion King scene a baseless quote, as the camera pans back when Simba and his pals are hanging out on a rock ledge, what should be the point of the image zooms in on the characters, revealing the expanse of the surroundings. This technique brings the focus to the main action, while still letting the viewer enjoy the context.
How to Master Timing in Animation
Timing is a crucial principle for giving motion its natural flow. The number of frames used to depict an action can make all the difference. More frames create slower, heavier movement, while fewer frames make the action quicker and more energetic.
For instance, if you want a character to appear to lift a heavy object, use fewer frames, making the action slower. For a quick, energetic movement like a punch or a jump, fewer frames will make the action appear snappy and fast.
Example:
In Aladdin, when the Genie dances, the movement is quick and fluid, requiring fewer frames to give the sense of rapid, fast-paced action.
When to Use Exaggeration in Animation?
Exaggeration is often the key to creating memorable moments in animation. By amplifying movements or expressions, you can create more emotion or humor. This principle is especially important in comedic animation, where timing and hyperbole are critical to the narrative.
Example:
Goofy’s extreme balance struggle in his roller skates is a classic example of exaggeration. His wild movements elevate the comedic effect, making it funny even without words.
How Do Arcs Improve Animation?
In animation, arcs refer to the curved paths that characters or objects follow as they move. This principle is derived from how real-life objects, including human movements, tend to follow natural arcs rather than straight lines.
By using arcs, you add a natural, fluid feel to your animation. A sword swing, a jumping motion, or even the movement of an animal’s tail will follow a curved path, which enhances realism.
Example:
Aladdin’s sword swing follows an arc as he battles the snake. This subtle curve makes the action flow smoothly and feel more organic.
Why is Appeal Crucial for Memorable Animation?
Appeal is not just about making your characters attractive—it’s about making them relatable and engaging. Characters that are full of personality, quirks, and charm are far more memorable than those who are flat or uninteresting.
This principle goes beyond just aesthetics; it’s about creating an emotional connection with the audience. Whether it’s the hero or villain, each character should have distinct traits that make them stand out.
Example:
Scar from The Lion King has a unique appeal, not only because of his sharp features and sinister eyes but also because of his personality, which draws viewers to him in a way that makes him unforgettable.
How to Apply Secondary Action to Enhance Your Animation?
Secondary action enhances the main action and adds layers to the character or scene. This could be anything from a character’s eyes darting while they are thinking, to a dog wagging its tail as its owner moves.
Example:
In Stitch, when he’s denied food, his ears flick back in irritation. This secondary action adds depth to the scene and tells us more about his personality without overshadowing the main action.
How to Create Fluid Motion with Follow-Through and Overlapping Action?
This principle helps your animation feel grounded in reality by ensuring that parts of the character’s body continue moving after the primary action has finished. For example, if a character stops running, their hair or clothes will keep swaying for a moment longer.
Example:
Mulan’s flowing hair continues to move even after she stops, giving the scene a realistic and natural finish.
Final Thoughts on the 12 Principles of Animation
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to sharpen your skills, mastering the 12 principles of animation is crucial for creating realistic, engaging animations. These principles, while foundational, are just the beginning. They’ll serve as the framework on which your animation skills can thrive.
If you’re eager to put these principles into action, there are many ways to get started:
- Enroll in an animation course to gain a structured understanding.
- Download free animation templates to experiment with these techniques.
- Buy animation software to bring your creations to life.
- Sign up for animation training to refine your skills with expert guidance.
By applying the principles and utilizing the right tools, you’ll be well on your way to mastering the art of animation. Whether you’re looking to hire a 2D animator or simply animate online, these principles will guide you toward success.
Animated Videos feature high-quality 2D animation with stunning motion graphics and innovative 2D designs. Visit blogs for insights.
FAQ
What are the 12 principles of animation and how can I learn them?
The 12 principles of animation are fundamental concepts that help bring life and realism to animated characters and scenes. To learn 12 principles of animation, you can enroll in an animation course or sign up for animation training that covers topics like timing, anticipation, squash and stretch, and more. These principles are essential for both beginners and advanced animators to master the art of animation.
How can I start animating online and what tools should I use?
To start animating online, it’s best to buy animation software or access premium animation tools designed for beginners and professionals alike. You can also download free animation templates to kickstart your projects. If you’re serious about improving, consider purchasing animation tutorials or registering for an animation webinar to learn from industry experts.
How do I create professional animations for my business?
To create professional animations for your business, you can hire a 2D animator to produce high-quality animated content or order custom animated videos tailored to your needs. Additionally, get professional animation services from agencies that specialize in creating animation for marketing, ads, and more. If you’re looking to learn the ropes yourself, enroll in an animation course to get started.
Where can I get animation certification and what does it involve?
If you want to validate your animation skills, you can get animation certification by enrolling in an animation course or joining an animation workshop that offers accredited training. Certification programs typically include a combination of practical lessons, theory on principles like timing and appeal, and hands-on projects to help you build a portfolio.
How do I improve my animation skills and stay updated with industry trends? A: To improve your animation skills, upgrade animation software to the latest versions and purchase animation tutorials that focus on advanced techniques. Additionally, join an animation workshop or register for an animation webinar to keep up with the latest trends and network with other animators. You can also sign up for animation training programs that provide in-depth knowledge of animation theory and real-world applications.
