Rules Of Animation

After researching, i found there were 12 key rules to animation however in this blog entry i will be talking about the key basic 9 rules. The following rules are:

• Squash and Stretch 
• Anticipation
• Staging
• Slow In and Out
• Arcs
• Secondary action
• Timing
• Exergattion 
• Solid Drawing

 Other rules exist of;

• Pose to Pose
• Appeal
• Overlapping 

Not all these rules necessarily work with abstract work. In this entry, i will briefly explain each one.

Squash and Stretch
The whole point in the squash and stretch is to give the effect of the weight and flexability. The most commonly used rule this is a bouncing ball effect. In slow motion a ball doesnt stay the same shape, when impacting upon a surface, it will squash the ball and when it realeased from the surface impact it stretches out. (as we can see in this picture.) Even watching videos of slow motion bouncing balls real life, makees you release a ball doesnt stay the same. 

 

Anticipation

Anticipation is where you have to try and understand the movement about to happen. The easiest way to understand is simply just by a stickman jumping. Its the movement produces by the body movement such as arm sings and bent legs that make him look like he is going to jump. The following image is a good example however its been taken by a still camera.

 

Staging

The whole point in staging direct the audiences attention to make the scene seem more important. Characters and scenery are normally used for staging to set the scene. After watching a film called Toy Story, there seem to be a few examples of good staging.

In this scene, Buzz fills up a large part of the screen and the camera is placed at his feet and tilted up to make him dominate the scene. Whilst Woody is very small and is the small and weaker character compared to Buzz.

Slow In and Out

This is where the movement of a body to slow down and speed up in a clip. Slow in and out goes for characters moving from one sudden pose to another.

Arcs

Arcs in quite an easy one to understand. Again the best way to describe arcs is using the ball again. After through a ball, it will always have the same effect of arc-ing down towards the ground after release. Using this effect gives a simple animation aviods the animation just being stiff, when with a simple arc it create a more realistic effect. (picture below) 

 Secondry Action

This is an action that directly performs of another action. It would be used to increase intrest in the scene. An example might be the facial expression on a character. The body would be expressing the primary action while the expression adds to it.

Timing 

Timing gives the effect of motion of an action. You have to have the right time for the right action to happen. Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action,

Exergation

Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons, exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of an artist.

Solid Drawing

The effect behind solid drawing is to give the image/animation weight and volume. The 3 basics towards three dimisional shapes are anatomy, weight and balence and light and shadow.