Toolkit: Animation and Character - 12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of Animation are as follows:

1. Arcs
    - Used for things like a pendulum, an arrow and the human body.
    - A lot of things move on an arc, the human body using an arc most prominently as joints tend to follow an arc in their movements.

2. Anticipation
    - Used to create tension and make the audience anticipate the coming action.
    - Can be used for things like running, jumping and throwing.

3. Staging
    - Used to direct the attention of the viewer.
    - Helps to establish mood and create focus in a scene.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
    - This technique needs to be planned out as it involves creating key frames and then filling in the area's in-between.
    - This can make the animation look more close to life and adds realism.

5. Squash and Stretch
    - Used when Animating things like a ball bouncing. The ball is stretched as it heads to and from the ground and is squashed when it hits the ground.
    - Used to show weight in the objects

6. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
    - Things stop at different times.
    - A character that's running will stop before the clothes will as the clothes with move with the movement of the character, fanning out in front of them before falling still.
    - Another example would be a character spinning in a skirt as when the character stills the skirt will twirl loosely for a few seconds after.

7. Slow In and Slow Out
    - This makes a more realistic movement as the object or person will slowly pick up speed and slowly decrease speed much like in life.

8. Timing (and Spacing)
  - Timing is the amount of time taken to get from A to Z. Timing is effected by how many frames are placed in the Animation.
  - Spacing is how it gets from A to Z. Spacing is effected by the way the frames are placing within the animation. Closer frames means slower action whereas more spaced out frames make the action faster.

9. Secondary Action
    - Secondary actions support the primary action without drawing attention away from them.
    - An example of this would be somebody running as the primary action and the secondary action would then be their arms moving forwards and backwards.

10. Appeal
      - A characters appeal can come from many different factors including the characters appearance and personality.
      - The way they move can also effect the appeal they have to the audience.

11. Solid Drawing
      - These are the principles of drawing that allow for things like tone and shade that will allow the 2D animation to feel and look more 3D.

12. Exaggeration
      - Exaggeration should fit the mood and tone of the scene it is in.
      - It can make a scene look more fluid and appealing as it may look stiff without the exaggeration.