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Animation: Introduction to the 12 Principles

As I'm going through my character animation course, I wanted to use this blog to share some of the things I'm learning. To establish a foundation for those future posts I think it's important to start with the 12 animation principles established by the early animators at the Disney studio.



These principles are both technical philosophies and terminology that help animators speak to specific aspects of a piece of animation that are working and/or needing work. When used together the principles can help any animation be perceived as more harmonious and believable. While they are listed as separate pieces many overlap and inform the others.

Recently, I heard Mark Oftedal put these principles into categories that I found very helpful. Group #1: MOTION - Squash & Stretch, Anticipation, Follow Through, Slow-In & Slow-Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing & Spacing; Group #2: TECHNIQUE - Solid Drawing, Pose-To-Pose & Straight Ahead; Group #3: AESTHETIC - Staging, Exaggeration, Appeal. The reason I found these categories so helpful is that it helped to further validate my "round about" path to animation. I sometimes hear the idea that if you want to do something you should only do that thing. While there may be some truth to that, I have found the concepts and skills I learned from my 2D design and illustration classes making a huge impact on my 3D animation work. Those years not animating were not a waste of time at all, and seeing the principles categorized in this way helped me see why those skills are informing my animation work.

I plan to dive deeper into a few of the principles from the motion category by sharing what I'm learning and show some examples. I'm going to start with a big one, Timing & Spacing. Until then I hope you enjoyed learning or at least reviewing these principles.

p.s. If you liked the shirt pictured above it's a design I created and they are available through TeeSpring.com
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