12 Principles of Animation: Disney's Animation Principles

Fundamentals of Animation

• The most fundamental principle of animation is debatable, but various principles contribute to creating a believable animation.

The Twelve Basic Principles of Animation

• Introduced by unknown animators at the Walt Disney Studio, specifically Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas.
• The main purpose of the principles is to create more realistic, engaging, and believable animations.

Principles of Animation

• Timing: deals with the timing of actions in an animation to create a sense of realism.
• Secondary Action: creating more realistic animations by adding secondary motions that follow the primary action.
• Follow Through and Overlapping Action: describes the movement of secondary elements following through on the primary element's action.
• Slow In and Slow Out: involves carefully controlling the changing speeds of objects to create believable animation.
• Arcs: describes the circular paths along which living beings, including humans, move.

Animation Techniques

• Straight Ahead Action: involves drawing each frame of an action one after another as you go along.
• Pose-to-Pose: involves drawing the extremes (beginning and end drawings) of an action, followed by filling in the frames in-between.
• Anticipation: the preparation for the main action, e.g., "How do you swing your foot back to wind up?"

Additional Concepts

• Squash and Stretch: the widening of an object on impact to maintain its volume.
• Staging: directs the audience's attention toward the most important elements in a scene.

Original Application

• The Twelve Principles of Animation originally applied to hand-drawn animation, specifically traditional animation.