*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.
- Appeal – The quality in relation to the personality of the character. It could be movement, the color or any design which bring the character to life. What matters is whether the design is compelling enough to catch the attention or not. Or at least not vapid, because the audience will figure out what is good or not.
- Staging (storytelling) – The action, the camera, the light … everything that’s on the camera for storytelling need to be comprehensible to the audience. The animator should know where he wants the audience to look. Basically, blend the story into the shot is necessary. Rule of thirds is important! Also, the camera setting is important, always draw storyboards before animating.
- Solid drawing – The the volume and the structure of the character need to be correct. The movements must be consistent with physics in the story, such as the lower arm cannot turn backwards under normal conditions. The skin weights need to be well painted. The stretching of skeleton cannot beyond limits.
- Timing – I would say it’s the basic thing in animation. Good timing may not receive good reviews. But bad timing will definitely receive negative reviews.
- Arcs – It’s the flow of movement. The motion need to be clean. Adding arcs to all the movements will make the movements look more natural.
- Slow in & Slow out – The motion of objects needs to follow physics. The accelerate and slow down of an object need time. Even the stand up and sit down movements follow that rule. So it needs more frames to show things accelerating and decelerating.
- Squash & Stretch – To show the mass of an object. The amount of squash and stretch show the object is soft or stiff. It also reflects the personality of the character if it shows in a appropriate way. The overall volume of the mass need to be the same.
- Straight ahead & Pose to Pose – Straight ahead is to pose the character directly and animate it from beginning to end. The advantage is high degree of freedom. Pose to Pose is setting up the key poses and then going back to fill in the gaps. Just personal preference, I prefer Pose to Pose because it will give me cool key poses based on my storyboards. It also helps to make sure that my key poses are connected smoothly, because I can modify my breakdown poses easily.
- Anticipation (expectation) – This is the pre-action of an object before its next action, such as straightening up before standing up. It often gives the audience a clue of what is going to happen. Also, anticipation can be elongated to create dramatic.
- Overlap & Follow through – Because of inertia, part of an object will continue to move after it has stopped moving. This is especially important in animation. And different parts of an object may have different velocities.
- Exaggeration – Exaggeration can create dramatic effect and is a good way to show one’s character. Remember that exaggeration is aim to perfect storytelling. Don’t push too hard.
- Secondary action – Secondary actions bring the character to life. It can also be a good expression of character and mood. For example, a character walks with his fist clenched shows he is feeling angry. In contrast if the character swinging his arms, it shows he feels relaxed.