#12principles

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Appeal

This principle can really come down to adding more appeal (charisma) in many different areas of your animation, such as in posing. The most obvious example, however, is appeal in the character design because you want to have a character that the audience can connect with or relate to, whereas a complicated or confusing character design can lack appeal.

Appeal is not only used for the lead characters. But also villain, sidekick and every other character:

Instead of using the same variety of shapes to all the characters, You can play with them in shape variation and use it according to their personalities:

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Solid Drawing

Solid drawing is the animation principle which makes the drawing looks three dimensional and believable with Volume, Weight and Balance. With solid drawing you will able able to draw figure from any side, which will help in animating your drawing.

Whilst converting a solid drawing to its animation, the animator has to ascertain that the mass, size, and shape are created according to the characters’ personalities and needs. For example, when you draw a cube, you cannot use parallel lines as that will remove depth from the picture and make it look flat. To make the object look 3D, lines need to be merging towards a vanishing point.

Rough pass of designing a character with solid shapes:

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Exaggeration

According to Oxford Dictionary, ‘exaggeration’ refers to the act of making something seem larger, better, worse, or more important than it is.

Exaggeration is used to push movements further, adding more appeal to an action, and should always be implemented to some degree.

Exaggeration can be used to create extremely cartoony movements including physical alterations or supernatural elements. Or, exaggeration can be incorporated with a little more restraint for more realistic actions. But, even then you can still use exaggeration to make a more readable or fun movement while still staying true to reality.

Application in animation:

An example of the application of exaggeration can be seen with animating the character expressions. If the character is sad, make the character look more sorrowful. If the character is having fun, make the character look brighter. If the character is nervous, make the character look shakier. Likewise, with other expressions, you need to make them more intense and nuanced. Exaggeration does not make the action less believable, it instead makes the action look more convincing.

In the case where the movement is fast, the exaggeration element needs to become more noticeable for the audience. When the frame is still, the drawing looks too exaggerated to be realistic. However, when you put it in motion, the drawing looks more realistic. This is because, in that sequence, the normal number of frames is higher than the number of frames using exaggeration, so making your eyes take in it all in a short time will create the above feeling. Thus, to increase the presence of frames containing the exaggeration element, you need to make the frame appear on-screen longer or make the frame more exaggerated & stylized.

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Secondary Action

This is an additional action that supports the main act. A secondary action is an integral part of animation as it adds interest and realism to the scene. It originates from immediate action, such as when someone’s arm moves backward after throwing something forward.

Let’s say a character is talking to another character in a waiting room. The two of them talking would be the main action, but if one of them begins tapping their foot nervously, that would be the secondary action. Other examples would be a character whistling, leaning on a wall, or crossing their arms while a primary action is taking place.

How to create secondary action:

To create a secondary action, the animator needs an image that illustrates the main idea. Then the secondary animation becomes a movement that happens depends upon the first image, an active motion. For example, when someone shakes their head, the primary action would be the head itself, and things such as hair or floppy hats are examples of secondary motions.

Important to note that if you stripped away the secondary action, the primary action should still be clear.

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Arcs

Arcs are circular paths taken by an object or action in animation.

Everything in real life typically moves in some type of arcing motion. Since it's unnatural for people to move in straight lines, you should adhere to this principle of animation to ensure you get smooth, realistic movements. The quicker something moves, the flatter the arc and the broader the turn. The only time something would move in a perfectly straight line is a robot.

If a character is turning his head, he will dip his head down during the turn to create an arcing motion. You also want to ensure that more subtle things move in arcs. For example, when a character walks, even the tips of their toes should move in a rounded, arcing motion.

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Slow-In and Slow-Out

Most characters and objects accelerate and decelerate when moving. Most movements are not linear, therefore to reproduce the slow-in and slow-out effects, we add more drawings closer together at the beginning of the action and same at the end of the movement. The closer the drawings are, the slower the animation will be. The farther apart they are, the faster the animation will be.

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Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Follow through is the idea that separate parts of the body will continue moving after the character has come to a stop. As a character comes to a stop from a walk, the arms may continue forward before settling in a down position. This could also be the case with articles of clothing.

Overlapping action (also called “drag” or “lead and follow”) is very similar in that it means different parts of the body will move at different times. An example of overlapping action is when a character raises their arm up to wave: The shoulder will move first, then the arm, and then the elbow, before the hand lags behind a few frames. You can also see this when a blade of grass waves in the wind. The base moves first and then the rest of the grass follows behind at different rates, giving it that waving motion.

Additionally, characters who are remaining still need to display some sort of movement (blinking eyes, breathing, etc.) to prevent the animation from becoming “dead.” This is called “moving hold.”

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Straight Ahead/Pose to Pose

Straight ahead action is a very spontaneous and linear approach to animating and is animated from start to finish, frame by frame. With this, you’ll create each pose of the animation one after the other. So, if your character is landing on the ground after jumping in the air, you would create the poses where he is standing, then the poses where he is beginning to kneel down, and then completely crouched. In other words, you’re really working through the animation as you’re going to make quick action fluid and dynamic.

With pose to pose, the animation is much more methodical, with just the most important poses required to properly tell the story. You would animate the character landing on the ground after jumping in the air by using fewer poses (standing and crouched). This allows for more simple work and ensures the proportions and timing are correct before you add more intervals later, and is great for slow, dramatic, or emotional scenes.

Smoke, water and other fluid elements are often animated using the straight-ahead technique. Actions that require tight timing and structure are often animated with the pose-to-pose technique. This method helps maintain a solid structure and preserve the volume. Sometimes, when using the straight-ahead technique, it may be difficult to calculate where the action will end up and the final drawing may be out of proportion and not where it should be.

Keyframes are the significant poses in a character's action, such as the first and last positions in a jump. In-betweens are all of the drawings between the keyframes; they move the action from one keyframe to another.

The more drawings there are between keyframes, the slower the action will appear. This is because more drawings means that there is more time to complete the same action.