12 Basic Principles of Animation

The 12 Basic Principles of Animation

What is the purpose of these principles of animation?

The principles are used as part of "squash and stretch", which will give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the features of a human face. Overall, your animated characters and objects show the illusion of gravity, weight, mass and flexibility.

These principles have been created b the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.

1. Timing and Spacing 
2. Squash and Stretch 
3. Anticipation 
4. Ease in Ease Out 
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
6. Arcs
7. Exaggeration 
8. Solid Drawing
9. Appeal
10. Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose 
11. Secondary Action
12. Staging

What is Tweening Animation

Short for in-betweening, the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Tweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation.