5 Basic Principles of Animation

Animators follow a strict guideline of 12 principles of animation to create the most believable movement. But 5 basic principles stand above the rest as the most important. Your animation will fall flat and look wooden if the key principles are ignored.

1. Squash and stretch

Squash and stretch give weight and believability to an object. Imagine a rubber ball bouncing on the ground. As it hits the ground it squashes and it comes back up it stretches. A metal ball on the other hand would barely squash or stretch. This is how you give weight to your animation.

2. Anticipation

One of the most overlooked principles of animation, anticipation is important to give animations a sense of grounding. Before getting up from a chair, you need to position your body to help you move. It would be unnatural to get up without using your arms to help push your body up. This is why anticipation is so important.

3. Ease in ease out

Imagine a clock’s swinging pendulum. It slows down on each side before gaining speed. The swing from side to side would be fastest in the middle and naturally slow down on each side. This is the basic concept of easing in and out. It makes movement feel more natural.

4. Timing

The number of drawings for a given action will vary depending on the movement needed. Fast movements get less drawing while slow, complicated ones need more. Timing will give believability to the movement of your characters and objects.

5. Solid Drawing

Without solid drawing practices, an animator cannot animate effectively. Solid drawing means the animator understands the dimensions of the object in 3D space. Volume, depth, and weight can be conveyed by the necessary movement.