Skip to main content

12 Principles of Animation

 1. Squash and Stretch

Making an object morph its shape to exaggerate its motion, such as a ball bouncing. Object should always keep a consistent volume. Can be used to emphasise facial expressions

2. Anticipation

Giving a character or object an overexaggerated motion before an action, to imply to the audience what is about to happen. It also makes it less likely that the audience will miss the action and end up confused about what happened. Can reverse the anticipation technique by making the audience think one thing will happen then doing another

3. Staging

The presentation of an idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear. Guiding the audience's eyes so there is no ambiguity about what is the focus of the scene at a particular point

4. Straight ahead and pose to pose

The order of drawing each frame. Straight ahead is drawing the first frame, then second, and so on. Pose to pose is drawing the start and the outcome of an action, then filling in the blanks.
Pose to pose gives the animator a lot of control
Straight ahead is good for animations that are unpredictable - fire and physics etc
Can use a combination of the both when there are overlapping animations. For example, use pose to pose to make a character run, then use straight ahead to make their hair blow in the wind convincingly

5. Follow through and overlapping action

Having body parts and appendages drag behind the rest of the body and have them carry on moving after the body stops. For example, dragging a flower pot across a surface - the pot moves quickly, but the head of the flower drags behind and eventually catches up and follows through past the pot before coming back to rest.

6. Slow in and slow out

Most movement starts slowly, builds speed then finishes slowly - less robotic
More frames of animation at the beginning and end of an action

7. Arcs

Moving in a circular path to look less mechanical. Add some filled-in arc-shaped space between poses to give the appearance of fast motion

8. Secondary action

Gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to the character animation.
Do not let secondary action dominate the primary action, or go unnoticed

9. Timing

The personality and nature of an animation is greatly affected by the number of frames inserted between each main action
More drawings means slow, fewer drawings means fast

10. Exaggeration

Every action or pose can be taken to the next level to increase impact on the viewer

11. Solid drawing

Making forms feel like they are in 3-dimensional space by with volume, weight, and balance

12. Appeal

Characters should be pleasing to look at. Should have some kind of charismatic quality to like about them
Give the character a dynamic design. use different shapes. Play with proportions. Enlarge the interesting parts. Don't overcomplicate characters

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Semester 2 Submission

Project Outline This project is an exploration into player feedback and player reward in game mechanics. I have explored this by creating mechanics in Unreal Engine, imagining how they might be used in a game, and how a player might feel when using them. This exploration progressed into player reward in puzzle scenarios, which links into my current area of research. I looked into how visuals can create a language that the player will learn to understand while playing the game, and will guide them through problem solving in the game.  Project Context My semester 1 project was a core puzzle game, meaning the game was centred on a central puzzle mechanic and expanded from that point. I wanted to explore a mechanic that was more of a peripheral puzzle that exists as side quests to the main gameplay. Many popular game series have main gameplay mechanics with puzzles along the way, such as Batman Arkham, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider. As these types of games are extremely popular and (a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design Inspiration Semester 2

First person adaptation I decided to switch the view of my game from third person to first person. I made this decision because movement around the levels would sometimes give the player a confusing perspective (if they had their back to a wall for example). I moved the camera to instead hover above a pair of arms, that would be used to show the hand movements from a first person perspective. The challenge now was to recreate every animation in first person instead. I looked into first person games that think have good first person hand animations. I think Dishonored (2012) is one of the best example, as it relies heavy on the tools and abilities that centre around the player character's hands. One of my favourite aspects of the design is the way the knife moves from a regular to a reversed grip when entering stealth. The knife is clearly visible and serves its purpose in both grips and it tells the player they are in stealth mode without the need for another visual prompt (there i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Semester 2 Project Progress

13th January 2025 To begin this project, I am experimenting with creating different game mechanics. This is to build up a repertoire of skills in Unreal Engine and also see if any mechanics seem as if they can be adapted or incorporated into a game. I began by using free assets to make a character that can run around and execute an attack pattern. This was just to experiment with the assets and create a character that I could test other mechanics with. The first mechanic I created was one that lets the player grab an object and pull it toward them. When within a defined range, the player's reticle changes shape to indicate to them the object they're looking at can be grabbed. Grabbing it moves the object on an arcing trajectory toward the player. This could be used to grab a weapon to use, to bring an enemy closer to be attacked, etc. 14th January 2025 I added functionality for the player to hold an object and attack with it. When an object is pulled toward the player and reach...
Post a Comment
Read more