In 1981, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas published a book examining the work of leading Disney animators from the 1930s and onwards. Through the course of their book they simplify their work down to 12 basic principles of animation.
These 12 principles of animation they created are:
1. Squash and stretch - is typicaly considered the most important of the 12 principles of animation. It gives your animated characters and objects the illusion of gravity, weight, mass and flexibility. This is done by stretching objects when it travels up and down and squishing them when they hit the ground. It's important to keep the object's volume consistent. So when something is stretched it needs to get thinner, and when you squash something it needs to get wider.
2. Anticipation - is used to prepare the viewer for what is about to happen and to make an object's action more realistic. This can be seen when a character jumps, bending their knees before launching, it can also be seen when a character pulls back their arm before throwing an object. The principle can be used to reinforce comedy, but is primarily used to make motion seem less awkward and stale, giving the animation more life.
3. Staging - is used to guide the viewer's eye and draw attention to what is important within the scene and to keep focus on what is important in the scene while keeping the motion of everything else of non-importance to a minimum.
4. Straight ahead action and pose to pose - There are two ways to handle drawing animation: straight ahead and pose to pose. Each has its own benefits, and the two approaches are often combined. Straight ahead action is drawing frame-by-frame from start to finish while the pose to pose technique is drawing the beginning frame, the end frame, and a few key frames in-between before going back and completing the rest. The pose to pose technique gives you a bit more control within the scene and allows you to increase the dramatic effect of an object's motion.
5. Follow through and overlapping action - is when animated objects come to a standstill after being in motion and different parts of the object will stop at different rates. Similarly, not everything on an object will move at the same rate. This leads to a small amount of follow through on parts of the object, like a part that stops slightly later than the rest of the object or some unattatched part of the object flinging off. This can be seen when a character is running across the screen, their arms and legs may be moving at a different rate from their head, which is overlapping action. Likewise, when they stop running, their hair could continue to move for a few frames before stopping.
6. Slow in and slow out - is, effectively, the application of momentum to an animation, with the beginning of movement starting slow, slowly picking up speed before slowing down and stopping slow once again. This is achieved by adding more frames to the beginning and end of the action sequence and it is used to give objects more life.
7. Arc - is used to exaggerate the laws of physics, giving animations an arc pattern. For an obvious example, when you toss a ball into the air it follows a natural arc as the effects of gravity pull on it.
8. Secondary action - is used to support or emphasise the main action happening within a scene. Adding secondary actions helps add more dimensions to a character or object's design. For example, this can be seen when a character is walking and other parts of their body such as their hair or hat, bob up and down slightly later than the rest of the body.
9. Timing - is basically the principle of how the laws of physics would apply for an animation. For example, moving an object more quickly or slowly than it would naturally move in the real world would lead to the effect not being believable. While using the correct timing allows you to control the mood and the reaction of your characters and objects. However, if you choose to push these limits it is important to be consistent.
10. Exaggeration - as you would expect, is when animators add more exaggeration to their characters and objects, making them more dynamic and pushing the limits just beyond what's realistically possible. This is because too much realism can ruin some animation styles such as childish cartoons, making it appear more static and boring.
11. Solid drawing -is an understanding of the basics of drawing. This is effectively knowing how to draw in three-dimensional space and understanding form, anatomy, weight, volume, lights and shadows. While animators can push the limits here, it's important to remain consistent. For example, if the animated world is in a wonky and warped perspective, it is important to keep that perspective throughout the entire animation.
12. (And) Appeal -is the idea that characters, objects, and the world in which they live need to appeal to the viewer. This can be things such as an easy-to-read design, solid drawing and a personality.
No comments:
Post a Comment