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Animation Principles

Animation Skills Week 6-12

The principle of animation, slow in and slow out, refers to the way movement beings slowly, gains speed and then finishes slowly. This principle helps replicate real-life movement and is important for that reason. On the other hand, movement by things that are no alive, like a robot, move differently and consistently make their movements at the same speed. When drawing in 2D animation, this is achieved by drawing most of your "in-between frames" at the beginning and end of the movement, rather than having frames being consistent throughout.

Arcs is an animation principle that shows how living creatures move in circular motions rather than straight forward or backwards. This is practiced within animation by making the Y-axis of a movement curved but keeping the X-axis straight. A ball would not bounce upwards in a straight line, it would curve as it reaches its peak and curve again when it drops back down. This principle also gives movements to bodies more expression.

Another animation principle is secondary action. A primary action is the main action of a character or object in a scene and the secondary object supports that. A character may jump, so their legs would be the primary action, but their clothes moving with them would be secondary. Secondary action can also tell the viewer more about the emotion of a character; for example, banging on a door with two scrunched up fists or an sad face while walking along.

Timing is a principle of animation that describes how the amount of frames being used for an action will lengthen the time of that action. This is due to more frames taking up more time within the length of the animation. An action with less frames can seem more violent or swift, but an action with more frames can appear softer and lighter. Depending on the amount of frames used, it can completely change how the action comes across the audience. With the industry standard being 24 frames per second, if an action takes 24 frames to be expressed, it will take an entire second to be carried out.

The principle of animation, exaggeration, is exactly that! It refers to the use of over-exaggerating an expression or movement to make it more "realistic". This is especially useful in cartoon animations as to add more of a human essence to the characters. This principle is done by taking an emotion like sadness and making the expression extremely sad.

Solid drawing is about making sure a figure in an animation looks like it fits in a 3D space. To do this, you would need knowledge and practice of 3D drawing and how to make, for example, features of a face be placed correctly on a curve (as faces are curved). A useful skill in drawing three dimensionally is using basic shapes to create the form, but you should be careful to not make the edges parallel and rather bent towards a vanishing point.

The last principle is Appeal. This simply refers to making a character appealing to look at, which can be tricky as everyone has a different opinion on what looks appealing. Focusing on making sure your characters have dynamic design and original concepts is a great start, but also aiming your design towards the demographic the animation is for is important. Furthermore, using a variety of sizes in your characters will make them look more interesting and unique from one another. Playing with proportions is also a great way to grab the eye of your viewers. Finally, keeping the character design simple and not overloading them with too many details, makes it easier for the consumers to look at and understand what the character is supposed to be.

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Head Turn

Animation Skills - Week 5/6

For this project, we had to design an original character and make its head turn at least 90 degrees while also including a change of emotion. As a not-so-terrific artist just yet, I stuck with a more simple and cartoony style while also making sure I included all the necessary features like hair, eyebrows, a nose and the shoulders. I wanted to make sure I showed that I understand how those features need to move, even if their visual impact may be small sometimes.

Despite finding this the most challenging project of the 3 so far, it was the most fun for me to do. Creating a character and making it come to life gave me satisfaction, especially after I realized I had animated the hair, shoulders and nose well. The only difficulty over these two weeks was that I was unable to be at the university on week 5 for this class due to travel issues, but I was able to still get the work done on week 6 by focusing well.

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Wave Cycle

Animation Skills - Week 3/4

Over week 3 and 4 of our Animation Skills class, we put together an animation that featured the wave cycle technique. This involved making something move from side-to-side and included follow through, overlapping action and drag.

I did so by drawing a dandelion and animating it to appear as if it is swaying in the wind. This time I spent longer on the design as I was more comfortable with TV Paint and added some extra detail with the dandelion petal flowing away in the wind. The only problem I fell into for this project was, after I added the ground so the dandelion wasn't floating in the scene, I realized the dandelion went too far into the ground as it swayed. Therefore, I made some corrections to the movement path so it didn't crash into the ground too harshly.

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Follow Through & Overlapping Action and Len Lye

Animation Skills - Week 5

Follow through and overlapping action, often associated with the term "drag", describes the way things move with something else but not at the same rate. For example, hair when someone shakes their head or a flower head being flapped around in the wind with its stem. If a person jumps while wearing a dress or loose clothing, the clothes would move separately to the person and would keep falling back down even after the person already has. Follow through specifically describes the way that an object can still move after the thing moving it is done, while overlapping action describes the difference in time of the object moving after the thing moving it already has begun.

Len Lye was a New Zealand born artist whose work in kinetic art and experimental film made him a true pioneer in both fields. From an early age, Len was fascinated by movement which led him to experiment with kinetic sculpture and later to create some of the world’s first direct films (animations made by painting or scratching directly onto film).

Len's curiosity took him through the South Pacific, where he immersed himself in the art of indigenous cultures, from Māori to Aboriginal art. This cultural exposure deeply influenced his creative approach. By the mid 1920s, he was living in London, connecting with modernism and making a name for himself with his unconventional films. His 1935 film A Colour Box, an ad for the British postal service, was revolutionary. It was the first time audiences saw animation directly painted onto film.

His art didn't stop at film however, Len also explored kinetic sculpture, works that moved and interacted with space like his famous Wind Wand sculpture. Len saw film and kinetic art as two peas in a pod, believing both could convey rhythm and emotion through movement. In his later years, Len moved to New York, where he continued to innovate in filmmaking and kinetic sculpture, leaving a lasting influence on artists worldwide. Today, his legacy lives on through the Len Lye Centre, dedicated to preserving and celebrating his work. Len's adventurousness and experimental techniques continue to inspire, proving that art, when liberated from convention, can explore entirely new dimensions.

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Straight-Ahead & Pose-to-Pose and Lotte Reiniger

Animation Skills - Week 4

Straight-ahead and pose-to-pose are two ways of animating a character. Straight-ahead describes drawing each frame one-by-one after each other, or simply, drawing as you go. Pose-to-pose animating is when you draw the first, middle and last frame of a sequence and then fill in the gaps between those three stages. The benefit to drawing pose-to-pose is that you know where the character is going to end up and how it is going to look. This means that you don't accidentally make a character bigger or smaller and the animation finishes with how you want it to look. However, while straight-ahead does have its downsides, it can make more unpredictable animation, like fire or water, appear more realistic and less rigid.

Lotte Reiniger was a trailblazing animator whose work with silhouette animation paved the way for future animators. In her lifetime, she created over 40 films, most famously The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which many consider the first feature-length animated film. Lotte’s work is recognizable for its intricate paper-cut silhouettes, each figure carefully curated to move fluidly through stop-motion photography. Using simple paper cutouts, translucent backgrounds, and clever lighting techniques, she brought complex fairy tales to life with a magical, shadowy elegance.

What made Lotte's work stand out was her attention to detail. She would spend hours cutting and assembling her characters, then adjusting them frame-by-frame to create motion. As animation technology evolved, Lotte adapted her techniques to incorporate color and new lighting methods, blending her shadowy style with vibrant hues in later films.

Her love of classic fairy tales and operas shaped her stories, which were often based on traditional tales but filled with her own creative twists. Though her work received acclaim, money remained challenging, and Lotte often worked with small budgets. Nevertheless, her influence is evident in animation even today, as her art embodies a timelessness that continues to captivate audiences worldwide. Despite working largely outside mainstream Hollywood, Lotte's legacy lives on. Her imaginative films remain beloved examples of early animation, showing just how powerful simple storytelling tools can be when combined with boundless creativity.

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Staging and Norman McLaren

Animation Skills - Week 3

The animation principle of staging is how people and objects are positioned and composed to tell a story and pull the audience's attention to certain places on the screen. Learning how to stage is important to not make a scene feel overcrowded and not overwhelm the viewer with too much information. For example, having characters do significant movements one at a time is better than having them all doing it at once, even if it is realistic that they would do so. This allows viewers to follow the story being told more carefully and not get confused amidst the action.

Norman McLaren was a Scottish trailblazer in animation who curated some of the fundamentals of animation today. Born in Stirling in 1914, Norman begun filmmaking when he attended Glasgow School of Art. How he started getting into animation however was his experimental work with scratching and painting directly onto film. His unique camera-less methods created a whole new way of visual storytelling.

Later in the 1930s, Norman's methods caught the eye of John Grierson, who created documentary films and enabled Norman to join the UK's General Post Office film unit. This is when Norman's career really begun to take off and he went on to win an Oscar for Neighbours (1952), which was a stop-motion animation that delivered a powerful anti-war message.

Norman did not stop at film however, he later went on to work in sound too and his experimental thinking created what is known as "graphical sound", which involved drawing soundwaves directly onto film. Norman McLaren's legacy is still prevalent today, with over 70 films created and many awards, his inventive ways opened doors for animations later on to be more abstract and creative.

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Anticipation and Émile Cohl

Animation Skills - Week 2

The animation principle of "Anticipation" is about showing a characters build up to movement, rather than the action just happening plainly. For example, when someone goes to punch, they pull their arm backwards before punching forward; this is done to build up force. If a character in an animation was to just push their fist forward without anticipation, they punch would appear a lot weaker and perhaps more playful.

Émile Cohl was french cartoonist and animation, dubbed as "The Father of the Animated Cartoon". Born in 1857, he began animating in the very early 20th century as motion pictures became something notable in Paris. Émile's fascination with animation was inspired by the success of J. Stuart Blackton's "The Haunted Hotel", a film that used stop-motion techniques. He studied the film frame-by-frame and figured out how to bring inanimate objects to life. His most famous work, Fantasmagorie (1908), is widely considered the first fully animated film. It featured over 700 hand-drawn images, animated in a spontaneous style, that showcased wild and surreal imagery.

Being considered one of the pioneers of animation, Émile created many other short films with his signature style of animated cutouts and object animation. Films like The Joyous Microbes and The Puppet’s Nightmare displayed his playful approach to storytelling. His work influenced many early American animators and created a foundation for animation today.

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Caroline Leaf

Animation Skills - Week 1

Caroline Leaf is an animator known for her unique techniques. She began her career in the late 1960s, when filmmaking was becoming more accessible due to affordable 16mm and 8mm film. While studying at Harvard, she took an animation class led by Derek Lamb, who came from the National Film Board of Canada. The class wasn’t about learning the industry and its standards, but about artistic self-expression. Caroline and her classmates explored techniques like stop motion, cutouts, and even animating everyday objects like keychains and coins.

Caroline's unique approach emerged when she started using sand to animate. Her first film, Sand or Peter and the Wolf, involved drawing with beach sand on a lightbox, which she manipulated to create fluid, shadowy images. This under-the-camera technique became her signature style, where she would constantly redraw the images to create movement.

Throughout her career, Caroline experimented with materials like sand, paint, and even scratching directly onto film. Her works are celebrated for their emotional storytelling and innovative use of animation as a personal artistic form.

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Animation Skills - Week 1

Bouncing bunny animation

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Animation Skills - Week 1

Bouncing Ball Animation

For our first class in Animation Skills, we began learning TV Paint and basic animation skills by creating a ball that simulates bounciness. By creating a pathway for the height and space of the bounce, I learnt a structured and simple way to create realistic and cartoon-y movement. Through this first project, I also learnt how to use onion skins, how to space out frames and the common shortcuts. I didn't have much trouble with this first project as I have a small amount of previous experience with animating, so after listening to the instructions and getting the hang of how TV Paint functions, it was fairly simple.