Principles of Animation
This PAGE is a WORK IN PROGRESS - Nothing HERE is of Merit... maybe that link to Muybridge Archive is good though.
My Personal Animation Philosophy
Principle Zero
The core concept of principle zero is there are fundamental skills necessary to learn before even attempting to move forward with other principles of animation. If one is going to pursue traditional 2d character animation, one needs to learn fundamental design principles and how to draw. If one cannot put pen to paper and execute a design physically from concept, there will be no ability to take that physical form and make it move.
Principle zero is a pedagogy philosophy. Typically it revolves around the concept of tiered learning, or scaffolding of concepts. The concept of deconstructing a learning objective into many parts and teaching the parts until the student can grasp the whole of the objective.
As you the reader of this wiki may note, this whole thing is laid out in parts. You the reader are free to jump forward to concepts, and some important concepts may even be at the end of a page. I as the creator of this site, want you to be able to digest all of the individual elements. Once many of these individual elements finally come together, you the reader should be able to walk away with the ability to make something for yourself and have your own artistic voice.
Illusion of Life Philosophy
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston authored The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. It is a book full of revisionist history and an amazing veneer wiped across the Disney animation studios legacy. It comes with some amazing insight into what made for appealing Disney characters. Its a great propaganda piece, with some excellent examples of how to make quality Disney styled animation.
This book is the beginnings of the infamous 12 principles of animation.
- Squash and Stretch
- Anticipation
- Staging
- Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
- Follow Through and Overlapping Action
- Slow In and Slow Out
- Arcs
- Secondary Action
- Timing
- Exaggeration
- Solid Drawing
- Appeal
Dicky Williams Survival Method
Probably from the way this header is written, the reader should note I am not a personal fan of Richard 'Dicky' Williams approach to teaching animation. With that said, I am one to not shy away from what is successful in his approach to teaching. There are gems in the heaping pile in which he has shared with the world. I admire him for that. Below are some of the quality take aways from his method of teaching animation.
Muybridge Site
In 2010-12 I spent a considerable amount of time researching Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge studied movement via photographs. There was no movie cameras when he began his research in Philadelphia taking photos of moving subjects. Following the link below to a old archived Sillydragon.com site, you can see reconstructed "movies" I have uploaded using Muybridge's original prints. The timing of the images are based on Muybridge's notes. Many of the frame rates of the video's will cause players to error out. Most of the videos should play in QuickTime Player or VLC Player.
