*It is important to remember while the 12 principles are the ground rules, don’t rely too much on them or you lose your creativity and imagination.
1: Timing and spacing:
The fewer balls, the faster the animation. Our eyes see less information, and vice versa. The time rhythm can make the animation feel more natural and realistic. For character animation, the suitable time rhythm also has a great effect.
2: Squash and Stretch
The law of scaling, which can bring some vitality to soft things, whether objects or characters. It can more fully show the characteristics of the role, which is very interesting.
3: Straight ahead and pose to pose
These are two different animation technologies: direct action is an animation, a painting, a painting frame by frame. The linear process can have continuity.
Key postures require more planning and thinking. Draw the key frame first, and fill in the middle frame later to make it clearer and more organized. Pose to pose is suitable for complex and perspective images, such as characters running along the alley. If it’s just a side run, you can use direct action.
4:Arcs
Using the arc law can make the animation more smooth. The motion of an object is basically an arc. No matter what creature it is, the movement will have radians, which will look more vivid.
5：Fllow-through and overlap
The movement of real-world characters, animals and insects will not stop immediately once it stops, but will work together. That is, the secondary organ will continue to follow the movement of the primary organ, although the primary organ may have stopped. Following action means that there are still a small part of actions after other actions stop. Overlapping movements are different body parts, and the action time should not be the same.
6：Slow-in and slow-out
Make the object more smooth and not stiff, adapt to the rhythm of the whole animation and increase fluency. It’s useless to use this method. All action connections are linear and constant motion, which is very boring.
7： Anticipation
Reveal to the audience that there will be actions. Without this, the audience will be very nervous about the next content. Preparation is a suggestive action that takes place before taking the initiative. A preliminary action is created to make the action reasonable and not abrupt.
8：Secondary action
It is an important supplement to the main action, which is to create the subsidiary action after the main action. It is different from following action. Following action means that the part continues to move with the stop of the whole. The secondary action is used to strengthen the main action, not to cover up the main action. In short, the secondary action is responsible for supporting the main action, increasing vitality and strengthening the main action.
9: Exaggeration
Exaggeration is about physical characteristics, which the audience will find very credible. Exaggeration shows the character’s emotions more strongly, gives the audience hope, resonates, and has a high degree of acceptance.
10: solid drawing
Solid drawing has a sense of weight, depth and balance, a sense of volume and freedom, but no sense of symmetry. The sense of symmetry is that the left and right sides are the same. Solid drawing makes the picture no longer rigid and more interesting.
11: Appeal
This rule is very important. It is the door to the animation world. Through exaggerated deformation of various parts of the character, such as facial features, props, body proportion, clothing and so on. Fully display the personality characteristics of the role, so that the audience is deeply impressed by the role.
12: Staging
Staging is that we should pay attention to the protagonist and tell the story efficiently. The principle of staging originated from the early theater, which means to clearly present the concept to the audience. Firmly grasp the audience’s attention. Based on different layouts, staging can be very efficient to fully present the story to the audience. This is the core concept. Avoid discomfort and abruptness of the audience.