Fundamentals of animation

My film is a mix of live-action and 2d animation, something I have never done. I'm aware of the basics of animation as its an interest of mine but I have never really done anything that I have taken seriously. So for the first serious animation, I decided to learn more about the medium, and record the information here to have one place to come back to when I needed to and put some of the knowledge into actual tests.

The 12 principles of animation

The book cover of The illusion of life Disney animation,1981

In animation one of the best companies is  Disney and their history with the medium is deeply respected. In the 80s Two Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas created a book that explained Disney's philosophy when it came to animation. This was deemed the twelve principles of animations which is now used throughout the industry. These principles are building blocks of animation and understanding them allows for more fluid movements. These are simple explanations of the principles so I can remember them.

Squash and Stretch: a figure is stretched and squashed to an extreme level to add fluidity. But the volume of the object doesn’t change.

Anticipation: When an audience expects something based on the actions beforehand

Staging: Similar in Mise en scene  where things are staged to make it clear and bring the audience's attention to the important part

Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose:  different ways of animating. Pose to pose means drawing key frames and then filling the in-betweens after. This is good for dramatic scenes. Straight-ahead action scenes are frame by frame which are more fluid and dynamic.

Follow through and overlapping action: Follow through is the concept that a character action should continue after a, movement only stopped by being pulled back for the next action. Overlapping action is when parts of the animation move at different rates. These two create more realistic movements that follow physics

Slow in and slow out: Animation needs time to accelerate and slow down How this is done is by drawing more frames in the beginning and in the end of an action.

Arc: Animation should follow implied arcs with its fluid movements, without them the animation is robotic. A way to check this is by drawing arcs into the animation as a sketch.

Secondary action: The main actions need an added action that gives more expression to the animation.

Timing: The number of frames in an action which means the speed of the action. Timing is important as it makes the action look natural.

Exaggeration: Imitation to the real world does not transfer well to animation. Making the movements more extreme brings life into the animation. Yet too exaggerated can be a fault as it muddles the movement.

Solid drawing: Remember that whatever is being drawn is in a three-dimensional space even if its 2d. Remembering the volume, weight and size of them compared to their environment makes it more realistic

Appeal: The character can be appealing without being good or evil. Cuter characters are more appealing.

Learning these were very helpful, before hand I knew when an animation looked wrong but I didn't know how or why. There was just something off about the movements .I knew that exaggeration was a part that was needed in animation but I didn't think about how the objects physical aspects like volume would affect it. Now its time to use these concepts in my knowledge.