Animation the way we know it has only one person to thank. Walt Disney. In his 65 years of existence what he gave to the world of Animation and movie making has more to it than anyone else ever. Taking a cue, Disney Animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas have condensed the field into 12 principles in their book “The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation” first released in 1981 which takes into account all that was done by leading animators from the very beginning of animation as we know it till the 80s.

Relevant from the very beginning even till date, it gives rare insights into the working of what goes into making animation- including anything that moves like CSS, websites and even smart-screen applications! Here we discuss the first 6 principles. The other six come later

• Squash and stretch

Considered to be the most important of the 12 principles of animation, it is said to follow the basic principles of physics when an object moves with the right representation of things like gravity, weight, mass, and flexibility. Like for instance a rubber ball going through the motion of going off into the air hitting something and bouncing back. It stretches on going forward & and squishes when hitting something. What needs to be seen carefully is that the volume remains the same always with only shape changing as per circumstances.

• Anticipation

What happens when you anticipate?? You prepare and your action becomes more predictable and realistic. Imagine an arrow appearing from nowhere for no rhyme or reason! Won’t it look out of place? Instead won’t it look realistic where you show a hunter pulling on a bow and releasing a volley of arrows? Now that is anticipating and it helps create scenes that do not look jumpy, half-hearted or clueless and gives the story essential meaning.

• StagingStaging in the world of animation means creating motion for a purpose which is to guide the viewer’s attention to an important part of the scene while keeping every other detail on the side.

A perfect example of this could be the Mahabharata war where Abhimanyu is drawn into the “Chakravyhu”. If a feature is made of the same, it would obviously have all manner of action all around with soldiers fighting each other in large numbers. Despite this, the entire scene would be staged in a way to draw attention to Abhimanyu and how he is drawn in and who fights him- while everything and everyone else would remain peripheral to the scene.

• Straight ahead action and pose to pose

Animations can be created in two forms. Either Straight Ahead or Pose to Pose with both having their own benefits, advantages, and drawbacks. And these are by no means exclusive in that sometimes animators use parts of both approaches to create the right scene

Straight ahead as the name suggests means drawing all action of an animated feature from start to finish- frame by frame. This is best where one is sure of the kind of action expected and there is no likelihood of any changes anywhere.

The Post to Pose technique, on the other hand, gives a lot of leeways and is ideally meant to handle situations where there is some amount of ambiguity in the scene. Here the beginning and end frames are first drawn with a few key in-between frames being thrown in. The balance is created as one goes along which thus gives one more control over the entire motion.

Also read: Career opportunities in animation

• Follow through and overlapping action

The action of an object does not come to an end together. Various parts come to a standstill at various speeds and rates. This is a very, very realistic assumption and when used in animation, give a very realistic output. Consider a dog chasing at high speed and coming to a sudden stand-still. His tail would come to stand-still at a different time-lag that the head and the same goes for the ears.

• Slow in and slow out

Typically meant to show the motion of motorized forms of transport where things start slow, catch speed and move on. When slowing the reverse happens. From speed, it gradually slows to a halt. Animation handles this kind of action by adding extra frames to the beginning and end of such actions scenes. It certainly gives more life to a scene.

So, folks, this constitutes just 6 parts of the “Principals of Animation”. The balance 6 shall be taken up shortly.