Animation will play a huge role in digital content marketing in 2024, with many businesses turning to the format. While animation and motion graphics have always been popular with audiences, the costs and time involved made them a riskier investment. However, with animation becoming more accessible to businesses, audiences expect higher quality, which is where the 12 principles of Animation come in.
How to use animation to market your business in 2024
Before we look at the 12 Principles of Animation, you might wonder how the format can be used to market your businesses in 2024. The truth is that the possibilities with animation are endless, both in style and story. From short social media updates to website walk-throughs and explainer videos, Animation is a versatile format that engages with your audience.
Character animation allows you to tell a narrative story without paying for film, actors, and locations. Since everything is created on a computer, you have complete control over your marketing campaigns’ look, style, and concept, allowing you to ensure diversity and accessibility for your viewers.
What are the 12 Principles of Animation?
Created in the 1930s by Disney animation pioneers Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, the 12 rules set out the most crucial techniques for animating characters and objects, and despite being nearly 100 years old, they are still as relevant today.
Base Drawing Technique
The first of the 12 Principles of Animation comes before you start animating; it’s all about design. Over the years, we’ve seen many different styles and looks for animated characters, but they all have a base drawing technique that understands anatomy.
The style of characters you want to animate doesn’t matter; underneath each should be a functioning skeleton that dictates and informs how the character moves.
Squash and Stretch
The Squash and Stretch technique is fundamental to producing a believable and reactive world in your Animation. Even though the characters you create exist in a digital space, their world still has physical rules.
Animating a ball bouncing up and down is relatively easy to do with a few keyframes, but the squash and stretch of the ball hitting a surface make it a part of the world you are creating.
Timing and Spacing
Timing and Spacing also refer to the physics of the world you create. Timing refers to how long an action or movement takes, while spacing refers to the distribution of frames between the start and end of the animation.
Your viewer will have an idea of how something moves, so as an animator, it is essential to get the timing and spacing right. For example, in the real world, a bouncing ball will slow and decrease in height with each bounce – the timing and spacing allow you to replicate that movement within your animated scene.
Anticipation Movement
When we move around and interact with the world, we make small movements anticipating an action. For example, if a person were to throw a ball, they would pull back their arm, shift their weight between feet, and tilt their head for a better aim.
In animation, creating small movements before an action is just as important as the action itself. In many cartoons, the anticipation of movement plays a stylistic role in the storytelling, such as a character’s legs running fast on the spot before zooming across the screen.
Follow Through Movement
Follow Through Movement is similar to the Anticipation Movement, only it comes after the action has happened. The follow through movement refers to what takes a character from the end of the action back to a neutral position.
When a golfer hits a ball, the club doesn’t immediately stop moving – instead, it will continue in the arcing motion until the full swing is complete. Understanding the follow through movement of your character’s actions is vital to creating a believable animated world.
Arcs
Arcs is all about understanding how people move in the real world, and it is much easier to see the absence of arcing in an animation. When you consider how a robot might move, it will always be in straight lines, creating a disjointed, unnatural feel.
Humans and animals tend to move in a fluid, arcing motion, creating a natural and flowing movement. Animated characters feel robotic and cold to a viewer when moving in straight lines, while animating in arcs makes your characters more human.
Ease In/Ease Out
Ease In and Ease Out is a good practice for all editors and animators using keyframe tools and is essential for producing a high-quality and smooth feel for your work. Most editing and animation software will have a super convenient way to add ease to your work.
This principle is about how the movement of an animation starts and ends. Think about a car – as it pulls away, it slowly builds speed and will slow gradually before coming to a stop. In Animation, no movement should start or stop suddenly – even the smallest detail can drastically improve the look of your composition.
Exaggeration
When working with performers, the camera can capture millions of tiny micro-expressions that help give the viewer a sense of feeling. Animated characters can lose much of that detail and subtlety, making reading emotion through facial expressions or body language difficult.
Exaggeration is the technique of over-emphasizing movements and facial expressions on your characters, and it can be a lot of fun to play with. In some cartoons, exaggeration is also used for comedic effects, such as a character’s eyebrows going above their head in shock.
Secondary Action
The secondary action refers to whatever else is happening in your scene and how it informs the story. Look at your secondary action as a way to emphasize the primary action and add context for the audience.
For example, if two characters are conversing, the primary action will be whoever is talking. The secondary action will be what the other character is doing – perhaps they’re yawning, scratching their head, or laughing – each gives the viewer more information about the scene.
Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose
Straight Ahead animation is when you start at frame 1 and keep working frame-by-frame until the animation is complete. Pose-to-Pose animation is when you pose your character for the first and last frame, filling in poses between the two as needed.
Neither method is better than the other, which you use will be dictated by your scene and your preference. However, you must establish your process before you begin animating.
Staging
Staging is all about setting the scene and placing your characters within it to tell the best possible story. Staging is as vital as blocking a scene in the theatre – it helps you know where your characters will be in relation to everything else.
Many animators storyboard their work in the same way they would a live-action shoot. The storyboard then acts as a design guide, informing the animator where and when action will occur on the canvas.
Appeal
The final principle is obvious but vital to any successful animation – the character and world you create should appeal to an audience.
While the other 11 Principles can help improve your animating technique and create a technically appealing animation, your character design and storytelling will keep them coming back for more.
Top Motion Array animation templates
Animation can be time-consuming, but fortunately, Motion Array has a vast collection of pre-animated scenes and toolkits to help with your next project.
If you’re a character animator, the 12 Principles of Animation are a vital and comprehensive list of techniques you should be using in your work. For motion graphics artists and editors, you can use these rules as a guideline to help you improve the quality of your work and try new things.
