Tuesday 9 June 2009

50th post: Animation Principals

Stretch and squash:

When real objects move only totally rigid ones, e.g., a chair, remain rigid in motion. Living creatures always deform in shape in some manner. For example, if you bend your arm, your bicep muscles contract and bulge out. They then lengthen and disappear when your arm straightens out. The squashed position shows the form flattened out and the stretched position shows the form extended. An important rule is that the volume of the object should remain constant at rest, squashed, or stretched. If this rule is not obeyed, then the object appears to shrink when squashed and to grow when stretched.
A classic example is a bouncing ball, that squashes when it hits the ground and stretches just before and after. The stretching, while not realistic, makes the ball appear to be moving faster right before and after it hits the ground.



Anticipation:

An action occurs in three parts:

1. the preparation for the action - this is anticipation
2. the action
3. the termination of the action

Anticipation is the preparation for an action which is about to occur for example in luxo jr where he wind up to jump on top of the ball. this can also help viewers become weary of a quick action for example dashing off screen.



Exaggeration

Exaggeration does not mean just distorting the actions or objects arbitrarily, but the animator must carefully choose which properties to exaggerate. If only one thing is exaggerated then it may stand out too much. If everything is exaggerated, then the entire scene may appear too unrealistic.

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