Lecture 3: Principles of Animation

Source: taken from 2002 notes

What is different/unique about animation?

• Unprecedented control!
• Anything can happen

History:

Disney needs to scale up – from Steamboat Willie to Snow White (parallel: Pixar from Luxo Jr. to Toy Story)

First Feature Film

technical (efficiency) and artistic challenge
• 75 minutes
• has to hold attention
• characters have to be convincing
• have to act / tell story – not just a sequence of gags
• needed to produce a LOT of animation

Had to develop the art of animation

• needed good art (drawing and painting)
• needed motion

Had to codify art needed to teach people to animate

• needed to make it efficient
• needed to be consistent with quality
• Had to assemble a large amount of talent they were figuring it out as they went along

 

Note: This is not just disney!

• Other cartoon styles have similar properties
  • Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes
  • Everybody who learns from the classics
• Might actually go beyond cartoons
  • real world acting
  • devices and interfaces

Lasster Principles Paper

The "reference" for this is:
   The Illusion of Life
   by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson
   Two of Disney's "Nine Old Men"

This book is a big coffee table book of Disney stuff.
Lots of History.
Two chapters on the principles of animation.
    and the story of its development

John Lasseter:

Disney animator (what did he do?)

Lured away from Disney in early 80’s to work with Ed Catmull

Important early computer animation

tried to bring Disney animation style to computers

1987 paper

basically a rewrite of Illusion of Life chapter

uses examples from Pixar movies (not Disney movies)

The Pixar Shorts – I only have them on VHS tape

1984 The Adventures of Wally and Andre B

1985 Pixar splits from Lucasfilm (no movie)

1986 Luxo Jr.

1987 Red’s Dream

1988 Tin Toy

1989 KnickKnack

1998 Geri’s Game

2001 For the Birds (I can’t show this one)

Why Principles of Animation

Why not just reality?

Anything can happen

we can do better than reality

we need to guide the viewer

only a suprise if we want to give a suprise

wierd stuff happens – need to make sure the viewer can understand it

Why do animated characters HAVE to be "more real than real"?

Real cinema: real actors

Expressive, we’re used to looking at it, experience

expectations

subtlety of real actors

personalities of actors

The 12 Principles of Animation

1. Solid Drawing (lasseter skips this one)
2. Squash and Stretch
   
   things in world are not rigid

   way too easy to make things rigid w/computer or drawings

3. Timing
   
   1s and 2s – more than just economics

   speed, evenness

4. Anticipation
   
   no suprises – unless you want them
5. Staging
   
   clarity in presentation

   blocking

6. Follow Through
   
   overlap

   keep flow

7. Straight Ahead vs. Pose to Pose
   
   different ways to create animation

   leads to different looks

8. Slow In and Slow Out
   
   non-linear timing
9. Arcs
   
   things don’t move in straight lines
10. Exageration
    
    pantomime

    more real than real

11. Secondary Action
    
    add interest and complexity
12. Appeal
    
    why can’t this one be codified?