Do you want to learn how to instantly improve your animations with some simple tips?
Well stick around and I'll show you how.
Animation is about bringing things to life and who was better at doing that than the
golden age of Disney animators? In 1981 two Disney animators
published a book which broke down and analysed their methods into the 12
principles of animation. So let's go through them using a simple example: a bouncing ball.
Staging is simple. When composing your shot, what's going on should
be very clear and understandable. For this animation we want our ball to start
on a ledge jump off and bounce on the floor. The main action for the story also can't be
upstaged by anything else in the scene, so while cute the kitten is just far too distracting.
Get out of here. The actions of most natural
living things will generally follow a circular path known as an arc.
Exceptions can be made of course for rigid robotic movements in mechanical objects.
So planning ahead I created this arc for the ball to move along.
There are two methods to animating something. Straight ahead animation is where you draw one
frame after the other, this can be good for quick fluid motions,
but it can be difficult to have consistent drawings and keep control of your timing.
I prefer the pose to pose animation method where you draw each keyframe and then fill
in the poses in between this planning gives you a lot more control with your actions and timing.
So I'll be using this for the main ball jump but both methods
have their uses which you'll see later on. The key poses are the ones that must be shown
they are the parts which are the most important to get your idea or story across.
So for this animation the key poses are going to be the grounded idle, the peak of the jump,
the impact with the floor, peak of the bounce and then the resting position. That's all I
need to get the idea across but obviously it doesn't look very good, so let's keep going.
Our key poses are mapped out over the arc, now I'm going to start with the in between frames.
Let's have a look at some in-between timings. The first one obviously has no in-betweens,
the second one has equally distanced in-betweens, which is good for a constant motion like running.
The third one shows a slow in where the drawings favour the final frame causing
that slow in effect. T he fourth one shows a slow out where the drawings favour that first frame
causing that slow out effect. And the fifth one shows both a slow in and a slow out. Having a
slow in slow out is really good at emphasizing those important key frames so that's what I'll
use for this ball bounce. Too much of slow in slow out can take away from the motion
and make it look more unrealistic, but we'll refine it later on when we look at timing.
I want the ball to appear somewhat squidgy so when it's falling through the air,
I'll stretch it out to make it really feel like gravity is dragging it down and likewise when
the ball hits the floor I'll squash it down to really emphasize that impact. It really depends on
the material you're trying to get across to your viewer in the context of your animation,
but even for rigid materials squash and stretch can help give your animation a little bit of
character. The most important part of this principle is to make sure the object's volume
is consistent if an object is squashing down it should also elongate and if it's stretching out
it should also get thinner, keep that in mind or you'll end up with something like this...
In most actions there is an anticipation before the action occurs, currently the ball
jumps straight from the standing position and that looks pretty weird. I only added a single
anticipation frame to this animation but it helps sell this action so much better. This is actually
really important in game animation too. Think about that big boss battle you just can't win.
A good boss animation will telegraph any actions to give the player time to react so next time
you're having trouble on a boss look out for those anticipation frames and maybe you'll win.
When an object moves or stops not all parts of that object will move or stop
at the same time, this is where overlap and follow-through come in.
This can be applied to anything, body parts, clothing, accessories, hair.
So when the ball stops I made it so that the top section of the ball
has a little bit of follow-through motion before returning to the resting position
I'll come back to this principle later on with some more overlapping motion.
Exaggerating your animations can be really fun the general idea is that if something
is supposed to be sad you make it sadder and if something's supposed to be happy
you make it happier. We exaggerate the actions to enhance the believability so
in our case the ball is meant to squash and stretch as it's
jumping and falling through the air so I've exaggerated the anticipation
the key poses and the follow through and the result is a lot more pleasing and believable.
If pushed with the same amount of force we expect a heavy metal box
to move slower than a light wooden one. As animators we can use timing to make our
animations more believable or to subvert expectations and add a bit of comedy.
For a ball animation the anticipation seems a bit fast, we can make it slower by increasing
the duration of the frame or we can add more in-betweens. I think a combination of both works
really well, this drags out the anticipation and it definitely feels a lot more intense. I did the
same thing when the ball reached the top of the jump to make it feel like it's hanging in the air
and again when the ball hits the floor to really emphasize that impact and make it more believable.
Appeal is all about something being a pleasure to look at and a grey scale ball and background
is just a little bit bland really isn't it? So, I transformed it into a little rabbit but
appeal doesn't just mean cute characters. Villains can be appealing too. Jafar,
Maleficent, The Devil, Feathers McGraw. It's all about design that is well done
and not over complicated with detail or complex shapes I just went with a
cute rabbit because it fits the shape of the ball and I mean come on look at those ears.
Even in 3d animation where the character is ready to go having strong drawing fundamentals will help
you understand how to manipulate things in different poses angles and perspectives. I
turned the ball into the rabbit's body and head and drew on a little face adding some squash and
stretch in the eyes and nose. I animated the legs individually to match the body and the ears were
done using the straight ahead method. This makes them look really fluid as they move independently
and react to the body, with plenty of overlap and follow through motion. I then drew an outline
around it all adding in a little tail and just kept tweaking it until it looked alright. Some
of these rabbit poses were difficult and could look better if I was a more skilled artist,
but I'm always learning and you should be too. Secondary action is an action that complements
the primary action. If we have a sad character a secondary action might be wiping away a tear.
So our rabbit's primary action is the jump. I thought it would be a good idea for the secondary
action to have the rabbit peeking over the ledge and then taking in a deep breath to prepare for
the jump. This adds a bit more character in context without upstaging or getting in the
way of the main action. This was animated in exactly the same way as the ball focusing on
the key poses before adding the in-betweens using all of the principles I've mentioned.
So this is how our final animation turned out, let me know what you think in the comments.
I highly recommend picking up this book that the principles are from, I've added some links
in the description for it and for some others that I recommend they all give a lot of great
insight and show examples to help take your animations to the next level. I also have a bunch
of other tutorials on my channel so if you're interested in learning more go and check this
playlist out thanks for watching everyone make sure you're subscribed if you haven't already,
and come and join the discord to hang out with the community and I'll see you in the next video.
Right...