Animation Principles+

“12 Principles”, Best Practices, and Animation Lingo

Some Notes on Learning Animation
● Animation is everywhere
○ Cartoons, Commercials, Phone apps, etc etc
● Animation is literally everywhere
○ Movement in everyday life
○ Literally anything you do or see… makes you a better animator and storyteller
● Animation is a lot like acting
○ But you don’t have to do any of the acting… your brain/drawings do
○ Literally not limited by reality
● Learning Animation critically will… make things hit different
○ Watching animated movies/cartoons
○ Watching… regular movies
○ Drawing in your sketchbook
Some More Notes on Learning Animation
● Art is subjective
○ This class focuses mainly on ‘cartoon timing’
○ Literally we are learning from what they call ‘the 9 old men’
○ Learning the rules before bending & breaking them
● Student work has a look
○ Do not feel self-conscious as you work thru learning everything!
○ Do not feel self-conscious about finding a style
○ Hindsight is 20/20
● A Note on Distractions
○ Cool brushes or character design might not mean cool animation
○ Learning how to manipulate your lines and shapes goes a long way
○ The more comfortable you can get with learning the basics, the better the stuff you care about
is going to look down the line
Don’t compare yourself to others!!*
*But do ya know… be aware of where everyone’s at
Some Final Notes on Learning Animation
● More out there than Disney, Cartoon Network, etc
○ Animation jobs are competitive
○ Animation studios want to hire artists
○ There’s value in animating, drawing for yourself
○ Will be learning from multiple sources this semester
● “Time Consuming”
○ Notoriously Time Consuming!!!!!!!
○ Thanks Disney expectations
○ Doesn’t have to be (depending)
○ Meditative & Rewarding
● Rough -> Tie Down -> Clean Up
○ With critique. Don’t be precious!
Animation Lingo
● “On Twos”
○ Standard for balanced cartoon animation timing.
○ A new drawing every two frames
○ Leaves room for “1’s”, “smears” (use sparingly)
● “24 Frames Per Second” “Frame Rate”
○ “On Twos” = 12 drawings a second!
○ Animation standard for creation and exporting.
○ Balance of easy on the eyes and easy on your capacity to draw!
● 16x9
○ Standard video export. More than often: 1920x1080px
● Timeline
○ Where your animation exists!
● Layout
○ Composition.
○ Be mindful of background VS animation layers.
● Keyframe
○ Storytelling drawings.
○ Think illustration, think design: tell emotion without movement.
○ Where you will be animating to and from - a guide to what you’d like to get across.
● Inbetween
○ The drawings you use to get from one keyframe to the next
● Hold
○ A drawing lasting longer than your timeline’s frame rate.
○ For example: an animation “on twos” might have a “hold” exposed for 4 frames.
● Onion Skin
○ Tool for navigating the timeline, comparing drawings to eachother
○ Helps you decide where to correclty put your drawings in order to show proper movement
● Line of Action
○ An imaginary line that goes through characters to help describe their mood, emotion… action
● Center of Gravity
○ “a point from which the weight of a body or system may be considered to act. In uniform
gravity it is the same as the center of mass.”
○ A roundabout way of telling you to make sure your characters feel grounded/never look like
they are going to fall over
● Silhouette
○ The shape that is the space your character takes up on the screen!
○ Always make sure you have a clean, readable silhouette
● Breakdown Guide
○ A separate layer where you can use hatch marks/little notes to help remind you of arcs, solid
drawing, etc while navigating your animation process.
 Name of the game is:
Making sure your ‘audience’/the viewer
understands what’s going on
If you are drawing so many drawings… better make sure to make them count!
#1 - Squash and Stretch
● A way to show energy inside of a mass moving
○ Movin’ and scootin’ around
○ Real life technically does it a bit - but it is subtle.
● Used to show weight and form
○ Can be subtle, can be as squishy as you want. Try both.
How’s this make you feel (and what is that feeling, though)?
#2 Anticipation
● A way to show your audience where to look next
○ Make sure your action reads
○ Make sure nobody misses anything
● Can be subtle, can be dramatic - anything helps
○ Again… try both!
● Make sure to anticipate all actions, especially in a complicated scene
● Easiest way: draw/trace ‘behind’ your drawing
○ In opposite direction you are about to move
● Squash/stretch can essentially be anticipation
#3: Staging
● Layout. “Setting up the scene”
● Think the way your character(s) or animation pieces fit inside the ‘camera’.
● Different staging shows different emotion and has different impact
○ Close up, VS full body
○ Extreme angle
○ Flat
● For the purposes of this class/learning how to stretch all these animation
principles - practice ‘full body’ animation poses best you can.
○ How can you get the full body of your character to fit on the ‘stage’?
● Avoid edges, be “frame safe”
Different staging can help really sell the mood of whatever you are going for!
For example: comedy does well flat. Action does great with dynamic angles.
#4 Straight Ahead VS Pose-to-Pose
● This one is not like the others
○ it’s about how you work through your drawings on the timeline
○ Straight ahead lends itself to quick animation, roughing out ideas fast with fast, organic
results
○ Pose-to-Pose leads to more sturdy and sound drawing - more technical, but more ‘believable’
● Pose-to-Pose = keyframes, solid drawing between them
○ Utilizing onion skin, main shapes
● Straight Ahead = ‘experimental’ they like to say
○ Though very good for tails and effects animation
● Combine them: try straight ahead first, then pose-to-pose until it’s done
○ Make a straight ahead layer - don’t feel like you have to use ‘twos’. Do holds of varying
lengths! Just get the animation out of your system
○ After that ‘pass’ is done, make a new layer and find your key poses
○ Make a new ‘pass’ using your key poses
#5 Follow-Through and Overlapping Action
● Different movements that will have their own starting, stoping, etc
● Things that have ‘minds of their own’ vs inanimate objects
○ Clothing, tails and ears… even cars. Your car animates differently than you do while driving it.
● Think Layers, layering…
○ where can you utilize them help you make your animation less
complicated for you to draw?
● Work toward making your layers (or lack thereof)
seem unnoticeable
○ Don’t back yourself into a spot where you are just… using
the same drawing on your timeline… but erasing little parts
of it… or adding more to it.
○ Redraw your drawings to give all your actions/movements
believable overlap
Notice when the hand stops (2 keys) vs when the drape does. These 2 main things are stopping and starting,
and dragging - all at different rates. The curtain thing moves the way it does because of the arm/hand action.

Notice how many layers they are thinking through. Road. Cones. Cones flyin. Cityscape moving.
Motorcycles swervin. Guy moving to throw a bomb. Bomb! Tunnel background. Bomb exploding!
Guy moving thru 1) smoke 2) fire! Guy’s motorcycle sliding! Guy putting foot on ground, guy
catching himself! Guys’ hair. Oh and all the little ashy fire bits falling around him.
#6 Slow in and Slow out
● Nothing really goes from 0 to 100
● You gotta gain momentum to believably go anywhere
● If you are running you can’t just stop
○ Especially down a hill
● Think about the energy and effort it takes to literally do anything!
● The closer together your drawings, the slower they move
● The further apart your drawings, the faster they move
○ Always have a little bit of that last one: overlap
○ Animation without overlap and especially without slow in/out will ‘strobe’
○ Need those frames to overlap in order to let your eyes read it nice
● An abrupt change is no good unless it’s for effect/used sparingly
We did it. We made it to the sonic part of the powerpoint. If you close all your browser windows I understand

Even with this eyeball walk cycle - when the eyes step
forward and drag back, the drawings are really close
together. They speed up only when they are crossing
over to make their step,
#7: Arcs
● Everything moves with arcs! Nothing moves in a straight line!
○ Unless it is a very specific and terrible robot
○ Throw something across the room. It doesn’t fall straight down!
● Different weight or intentions are going to determine the arc at hand
● Think of tips of hands/feet, centers of heads/torsos, etc
○ Easiest way to start getting them into your practice is to
make a guide layer to show where you’ll be animating to and from.
● Utilize slow in and out inside of your arcs
○ Again: if you throw something,t will slow down when it is at the top of it’s arc
○ When an animal runs really fast and goes to turn, it MUST make an arc - it keeps it from
falling over. Your car can’t even turn perfectly without doing a lil arc action.
Arcs !!!!
#8: Secondary Action
● Similar to overlapping action, but think “Cause and Effect”
● Consider stacking your animation in order of importance
○ For example: a body movement will determine what extraneous clothing will do
○ Another example: if a main character is holding another one, the main character’s actions will
determine where all the animation ‘lands’ for the secondary, held character
● If _______, then _______
○ Planning this out in different steps will help make your stuff more understandable
● This can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like…!
If ____, Then _____
#9 Timing
● Accumulation of literally everything we have been talking about and how you
can spread it out on a timeline to make it make sense!!
● Timing’s what it’s all about!
● We are lucky to do this digitally - but a lot of animators still use timing
methods used in the paper days
○ Used to have to really get a grasp on how long it’d take to get your
animation to read correctly (you’d have to wait…!)
● TIPS FOR TIMING!
○ Hold all keys, or have a ton of overlap, for at least 6 frames
○ Playback your animation a lot;
○ Do your key poses/moments have ‘breathing room’?
Just like you don’t want a crowded composition in a
drawing, you don’t want a crowded composition across a timeline
A few examples of timing I really like
#10 Exaggeration
● What’s the point of even animating if you don’t exaggerate?
○ Just shoot live action footage if you don’t want to exaggerate!
○ You can push any expression to the limit
which can really just make or break a funny moment or ‘take’
● Animation is literally an exaggeration of life
○ Making believable movement that is compelling
○ Telling stories that you literally cannot tell with live action storytelling
● More animator lingo: “plus” - as in, push your drawing poses harder.
Exaggerate them more.
○ Pick your poison: exaggerate a TON off the bat, then tone down your expressions as you
tighten up your animation passes - OR - start off refrained, and crank up your expressions as
you continue to ‘plus’ your animation passes
#11 Solid Drawing
● A solid foundation in drawing will allow you to animate anything you want
○ A wonky foundation in drawing will have you running into walls if you are trying to “classically
animate” and make believable things moving through an imaginary space
● Consider doing loose underdrawings on your rough animation passes. Lines
to make where eyes/faces go, a middle line thru a torso, etc
● Consider weight, center of gravity
○ your character should never feel like it would fall over
○ All movements should feel intentional
● SOLID DRAWING TIPS!
○ Make sure your feet (or anything else solid, placed on a surface) never slide around
○ Do sketches of different angles of your characters before jumping into animating them
○ Literally, keep practicing drawing, especially from life
The biggest obstacle to animating well is making your flat drawings feel like they are alive in a flat space. By practicing manipulating shapes in
perspective, you can get away with a ton of great animation, EVEN IF you struggle at drawing people.

That being said: get better at drawing people!! The shapes and structure is readable and recognizable to our also human brains. The better you
understand how it all works…. The better you can replicate it, and create work that is compelling to literally other humans
#12 Appeal
● This one is really pushing it…
○ Did the 9 Old Men just want to have an even number of principles??
● But seriously: it is how well you can mesh all 11 of the other
principles together to create “good” animation
○ Again, good is subjective
○ Literally appeal is …. Subjective!
● Starting out, your work is going to “lack appeal”
○ Your work will get more appealing over time, with practice
○ As with anything else in life…!
● DON’T STOP! Once you notice, literally, that your animation is
appealing to your own eye: it’s super rewarding
 I can only describe appeal as, “I am glad someone made this thing that I have sat down with and watched.”
Maybe appeal isn’t so talked about in other art mediums because other art mediums don’t require you to sit down with someone
and all of their thoughts & drawings they have spent countless hours on (hey, again, not always but animation is notorious for that)!

Here is the first time I probably recognized it (I saw this as a CCAD Illustration Freshman, and because of this, I changed majors)
Once out of school, I started learning about things other than just the “12 Principles” … like how a fun
tree-chain version exists from the “Walt Disney of Japan”. And I started to meet and find out about a ton
of artists who didn’t stop animating after they started to figure it out
 My taste for stuff has evolved since learning about animation and getting to know more people who are working inside of it!
This is a music video made by Benjy Brooke (one of our notable animators - he’s from Grandview, but lives in New York these days)

He made it with an awesome team of animators, including a ton of Gobelins students (who seem to be known for their drawing ability)
Animation Principles+
● Getting better at classical animation movement just really takes a combination
of practice and careful attention to detail that is happening in the physical
world around you
● While extremely hard to get to that high-high standard point, the journey to get
as good as you can is really fun
○ Ends up teaching you a lot about life and emotion
● Animation isn’t just about ‘the principles’, but it is a great place to start
○ Learn the rules before you break them
○ Don’t feel self-conscious as you work on sharpening your skills as an artist
● Animation “takes time” to make and also to enjoy
○ Cheers to getting better at making things that make people feel something!