For Love of Animation
 

 		  
Welcome back! This month we'll be digging right into a few animation principles to help show you how to

 

BRING YOUR CHARACTERS TO LIFE


There are several basic principles to keep in mind whenever your are creating animated characters. The more that you use each of these principles in the creation of your animation, the more you will observe the "professional edge" in your finished production.

SIMPLE PRINCIPLES:

1. EXAGERATION:    

General

Do not strive for realistic movement. Instead, look for every opportunity to exagerate movement. A good exercise is to rent a well made classic cartoon and watch it run frame by frame or slow motion. Analyze the work of other artists. Watch how a character is contorted as it slams into something.
example: A bouncing ball

The ball would not merely go flat on the bottom as it hits the ground. Instead draw the ball so that it nearly squashes flat before bouncing up.


Exageration: In Character expression

Example: If your character looked up and saw something frightening.The character would not just have its eyes wide opened. You might have their jaw drop onto the ground and their eyes pop right out of their head while their hat spins around. As a rule the greater the exageration the better it looks.

These exagerations would also apply to any of the following emotional states:
Anger, Joy, Peacfulness, Tiredness, Sympathy, Sadness, Aggression, Love sick, Naughty, Showing off, Arguing, Crazy and anything else that comes to mind.

Exageration: In circumstances

How many times have you seen a cartoon character fall off a cliff and fall to the ground for what seems like an eternity before he final raises a little cloud of dust. Think about exagerating the circumstances that your character is involved in.

2. ANTICIPATION:    
The best way to descibe this is as follows. If for instance, a man was going to hop over a hole in the ground....before he actually made the jump, he would anticipate how high or how far. What this means is that before his feet would lift off the ground, he would first have to move in into a crouch as he anticipates "how high" or "how far" he must jump. Drawing these extra frames at first seems like a lot of extra work for nothing. When you see the finished result, it will be well worth it. Do not forget that when the man lands on the other side of the hole, he must also move into a crouch to "catch his balance".

 

The central idea behind "ANTICIPATION" is that just before your character begins to move, it will slightly move in the opposite direction first. This applys also to just walking action. Before your character takes that first step, there is a slight movement backward. Study this in the work of others and you will notice it often.

3. SLOW IN / SLOW OUT:    
When something begins to move, it does not generally begin moving at it's full rate of speed. For example, a car is about to drive away from a stationery position. It does not begin to move along at 30KPH. First it starts to slowly roll forward....moving faster and gaining some speed it eventually is moving at 30KPH. The same is true when it comes to a stop. It begins to slow down and eventually slows to a stop.

 

Remember this when you're animating movement. SLOW IN / SLOW OUT also applys to the Idea of a bouncing ball. As the ball reaches the height of its bounce it slows before eventually the gravity begins pulling it back to the ground. Think about it.

 




  Back