The document outlines the 12 principles of animation, including key concepts such as squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, and timing, which together enhance realism and believability. Each principle is briefly defined with examples that illustrate its application in animation. The guidelines aim to improve the quality of animated work by emphasizing fluid movement, character appeal, and effective storytelling techniques.

1. PRINCIPLESOF ANIMATION
By Sunil Talekar

2. PRINCIPLESOF ANIMATION
1 Squash and stretch
2 Anticipation
3 Staging
4 Straight ahead action
and pose to pose
5 Follow through and
overlapping action
6 Slow in and slow out

3. PRINCIPLESOF ANIMATION
7 Arcs
8 Secondary action
9 Timing
10 Exaggeration
11 Solid drawing
12 Appeal

4. Squash andstretch

5. Squash andstretch
This is probably the most important rule of animation:
it refers to the natural deformation, weight and flexibility
of objects.
It's a phenomenon we can observe in real life, watching a
ball bounce, for example.
If you apply a lot of squash and stretch, you'll get a
cartoon-type of animation, pleasing to the eye, often
wanted in motion design video.

6. Squash andstretch

7. Squash andstretch

8. Anticipation
Anticipation is the rule of animation where you
introduce a movement by another one.
For example, a baseball player, before throwing the
ball, will prepare for the action by moving his arm
back (and in fact his whole body will take a special
"pose").
This allows you to prepare your audience for what will
happen next and get a more "realistic" impact. In
motion design, for example, if you want to animate a
rotating object, make a slight rotation in the opposite

9. Anticipation

10. Anticipation

11. Anticipation

12. Staging
A process that actors know really well:
showing something in an explicit way on screen and directing
the viewer's attention on it to make the purpose of the scene
really clear.
The position from the camera and the orientation of what you
want to show can completely change the understanding of an
element.
A good way to know if your staging is going to work is to
imagine your scene as a silhouette.

13. Staging

14. Staging

15. Staging

16. Staging

17. Straightahead actionandposetopose
These are two different ways to animate something. "Straight ahead" animation is
when you animate a character or something as it is moving, like when you move in
real life, you animate it frame by frame, without a plan.
On the other hand, "pose-to-pose" animation is when you begin by placing the most
important states, or "keyframes" of your animation, creating the transition between
two keyframes.
That way, you have a preview of what your animation will look like without having
to animate the whole thing.
This allows you a lot more flexibility, if some pose has to be changed; you don't have
to re-do the whole thing.
Nowadays, all animators work in "pose-to-pose", and computer animation software
allows us to be even more efficient as it automatically generates the "in-between"
frames.

18. Straightahead actionandposetopose

19. Straightahead actionandposetopose

20. Straightahead actionandposetopose

21. Straightahead actionandposetopose

22. Follow through and overlapping action
Follow-through and overlapping action are ways to give a more
"believable" look to your animation.
The overlapping action is the tendency for the different
parts/elements of your object to move with different timings
(e.g. the arms of a character are not animated with the same
timing as its legs.
Doing such a thing would give a really robotic-look to your
animation, and that's one of the most common problems with
animations today). Also bear in mind the fact that some
elements continue to move when the "main" one stopped.

23. Follow through and overlapping action

24. Follow through and overlapping action

25. Follow through and overlapping action

26. Slow in and slow out
When you move your arm, it won't move at a defined speed all
the time.
The movement is like a robot's where it starts slowly,
accelerates and then slows down to get to its final destination.
It also allows us to emphasize the key-poses of our animation
which in a way, gives more time for the viewer to see it.

27. Slow in and slow out

28. Arcs
Here we are talking about the trajectory of your animated
element through time.
An arched trajectory really helps when it comes to the realism
and the impact of your animation,
as the movement appears smoother and gentler.

29. Arcs

30. Arcs

31. Arcs

32. Arcs

33. Secondary action
It's always good to add some secondary animation to your
character/object.
For example, a female character running will have her hair
moving according to the speed of her run.
Another is to imagine a bull with a ring in the nose.
The ring is an independent object that deserves his own
animations but are related to the bull's face movement.

34. Secondary action

35. Secondary action

36. Secondary action

37. Timing
this is one of the most important rules.
Timing is the number of images it takes for an animation to
move from one key image to another.
This will set the rhythm of the animation and allow you to have
some non-linear action.
That will increase a lot the quality and generate more interest
for your animation.
Spacing is the difference between two frames. In other words,
it’s the detail of the timing.

38. Timing

39. Timing

40. Timing

41. Timing

42. Timing

43. Exaggeration
When it comes to cartoon or non-realistic
animation,
exaggerating a movement will always bring more
quality to your animation.
It allows your object or character to not look static
and fixed but fluid and with their own way of
thinking.

44. Exaggeration

45. Exaggeration

46. Exaggeration

47. Solid drawing
This is mostly applicable to 3-dimensional elements.
If only talking about 3D objects, but every object has its own
thickness, shape, reaction to lights and shadows.
In traditional animation, this requires a lot of skills, but in CG
animation, it is much easier to give life and importance to an
object with for example, a simple drop shadow.

48. Solid drawing

49. Solid drawing

50. Solid drawing

51. Appeal
Here we are talking about the charisma of your animation.
If we we’re talking about an actor, we would refer to it as their
acting ‘game’.
If you want something to be positive, design it with the
appropriate features:
a smile, round shapes, light colors…
and if you want to express a bad thing, use de-saturated dark
and sad colors, mad eyes, spikes, triangle and square shapes.

52. Appeal

53. Appeal

54. Appeal

55. Thanks