the 12 principles of animation are;
-Squash and stretch
Adds the illusion of weight and volume, can be expanding and compressing a character’s body to create the illusion of movement and how gravity acts onto objects.
-anticipation
Anticipation lets the audience know a major action is about to take place, like throwing back your leg before starting to run.
-Staging
Every pose or action a character makes should have clear intentions, there’s no point in making actions out of pointlessness.
-Straight ahead and pose to pose
The pose to pose technique is where the animator will draw in the specific poses they want the character to take then filling in the frames in between, whereas the straight ahead technique is where the animator crafts each individual frame separately.
-Follow through and overlapping action
This principle is to do with whenever a character stops moving, elements of their body should stop after, so when a character stops running, for example their hair may bounce forward to stop after or their bag may compress to a halt.
-Slow in and Slow out
This is where a character’s action may begin slow, speed up in the middle, then slow down at the end again.
-Arc
any action with a circular motion, generally any hand/arm movements.
-Secondary action
an action that adds more emphasis on the first action, like a dog chewing a bone but the secondary action may be their tail wagging in glee.
-Timing
The animators will use timing to make sure the object is abiding the laws of physics, if the animator wants to slow down the object then more frames will be used whereas if the object is to be moved at a higher speed, then less frames will be used.
-Exaggeration
This is to do with stating a point, if the character being animated has to express shock, their eyes may be drawn larger than life or their mouth may open wider than humanly possible to express the emotion effectively. although, this mustn’t be done too much as to not make the scene believable.
-Solid drawings
even though animations are presented in 2d forms, there should be 3d illustrations thrown into the mix to make it more realistic, this will help to portray weight, proportion and balance.
-Appeal
Although not all characters need to be appealing, but there should be something on screen that will help the audiences to remain engaged and interested to keep them coming back for more.