Abstract
This article suggests a discussion on the reconfiguration of the 12 principles of animation and their necessary refinement for contemporary animation to address the growing complexity and expansion of the animation industry. The expansion of the 12 principles of animation into the various animation techniques requires a consideration of their development, which, in the 1930s and 1940s was sufficient for animation’s hand-drawn animation needs; since then, the principles have proven themselves accurate and incredibly helpful for subsequent decades. Nevertheless, this article indicates that a refinement of the principles is required to accommodate a broader range of animation techniques. The great advantage of the 12 principles of animation is their simplicity and logic; however, they do not apply in their entirety (as the full set of 12) to hand-drawn digital animation, stop-motion animation, experimental or digitally animated media. Therefore, this article explores the initial 12 principles with additions and variations suggested by artists and scholars over the last 30 years, and concludes with a reorganization and expansion of most of the principles’ content, a breakdown into sub points and an updated terminology to reconceptualize the 12 principles of animation for all animation techniques.
Keywords
Introduction
The 12 principles of animation were first developed and refined by the Walt Disney Studios from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s during an intensive process of research, study and understanding of natural human, animal and object motion and action. With the illusion of life as their target, Disney’s animators translated physical laws and realistic movements into a set of 12 aesthetic and behavioural principles as a way of producing believable and life-like qualities within hand-drawn animation. Such principles were designed to produce convincing action on screen that was not only based on real-life physics and forces but would likewise produce characters that were believable in their emotional state and capable of stirring empathy in the audience. The publication of ex-Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation (1981) explained the 12 principles through their importance to Disney’s character-animation style, while solidifying the Studios’ own central development of principles that would be highly influential across the Hollywood animation industry. The strength and appeal of the 12 principles were, initially, their exceptional simplicity and conciseness of design. This brevity, however, gives them the appearance of being just that: rules to follow in pursuit of successfully producing high-end commercial character-animation, while neglecting their high degrees of complexity and vast artistic capabilities. In comparison, the set of 12 expands dramatically when dissected in content and artistic scope, which this article will explore further and offer a restructured set of the original principles to fit all animation techniques alike, not just traditional hand-drawn Disney character-animation for which they were initially intended.
The original principles focus solely on hand-drawn animation produced within the Disney Studios, and yet it is possible to produce a list of principles that might fit a broader range of animation techniques and better serve the technical and artistic scope of animation as a creative medium. Separating out the principles from their historical and industrial connection to Disney-style animation therefore provides a set of principles that is more inclusive of all animation techniques, processes and methods of image-making. Animators working in stop-motion animation, with more experimental techniques, 1 from the 1960s on computer animation and from the 1970s on video/computer game design, are often selecting from the original Disney list of animation principles only those that fit their individual needs. Those principles that are not fully suitable for their specific techniques are then ‘adjusted’ and often bent precariously in their content to a seemingly comfortable fit that, unfortunately, does not always work successfully. The principle of ‘solid drawing’, for instance, is repeatedly challenged in digital animation and stop motion, as apparently it does not apply as a principle to their techniques.
Animation is an artistic field and therefore the extent to which artists use the principles in their animation is a matter of preference and artistic interpretation. The broad range of experimental techniques, including sand-animation, paint-on-glass animation, pixilation, or animating on the pin-screen are techniques that, as this article contends, can all use the same animation principles, but do so to a varying degree compared to traditional hand-drawn animation. Artists using an experimental technique might choose to ignore most of the principles in their work to achieve a unique design that is artistically independent from commercial animation. The terminology and content of the original 12 principles are therefore in need of restructuring and breaking down into sub points in order to, on the one hand, be helpful to animators across all animation techniques while, on the other hand, to assist animation scholars with a clearly structured terminology for their aesthetic evaluation.
While it is not possible to compile a full list of principles, this article therefore has two goals: firstly, to restructure Disney’s original 12 principles of animation to embrace all animation techniques equally and at the same time adjust the terminology; and secondly, to reconceptualize most of the principles to clearly list their artistic possibilities, which will lead to greater precision in defining the 12 principles of animation.
Historical overview of the principles of animation
With the assistance of the Disney animators’ intense study of anatomy and live-action footage to grasp physics, motion and movement, the Walt Disney Studios specifically saw their artistic interpretation of movement based directly on real life, and so real life had to be observed and thoroughly understood. The knowledge of movement, starting with Newton’s Laws of Motion and the detailed photographical studies of human and animal motion, explored in the last quarter of the 19th century by artists like Eadweard Muybridge or Étienne-Jules Marey, were already-existing scientific aids for animators trying to translate this knowledge artistically into animation. Building upon these, the additional studies that took place at the Walt Disney Studios included test-screenings of the character animation, which were then critiqued and further improved, though this was a method other studios did not initially follow. This ongoing improvement of the work processes elevated the quality of Disney animation above the work of other studios at the time. The studios’ growing artistic repute derived additionally from the application and exploration of the 12 principles of animation, which, around the year 1935, had evolved into the following principles:
Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Follow through and overlapping action
Slow in and slow out
Arc
Secondary action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid drawing
Appeal
Although they were central elements of Disney’s illusion of life aesthetic style (what Paul Wells, 1998, calls Disney’s ‘hyper-realism’), many of these principles had already been in use in animation’s infancy prior to their adoption by US studios. The principle of ‘arcs’,
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for example, is the very foundation of movement and has been used in its simplest form for animation since the late 19th century. The less the movement follows the arc as its leading path, the more nervous and hectic the movement will appear. The arc is therefore crucial in even the most basic action and movements. Its application to animation was already apparent in Charles-Émile Reynaud’s short-film Pauvre Pierrot (1892). A very rudimentary use of the next principle ‘timing’, and even a simple form of ‘slow in and slow out’, is where Gertie moves her head left and right in Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), a character that anticipates the principle of ‘appeal’. ‘Staging’ and ‘exaggeration’ can also be found in Reynaud’s and McCay’s short films. Thus, at the Disney Studios, the principles were explored as to their ability to produce life-like animation, following Walt Disney’s aesthetic direction of bringing movement that is based on reality onto the screen. Disney himself wrote: A good many of the men misinterpret the idea of studying the actual motion. They think it is our purpose merely to duplicate these things. This misconception should be cleared up for all. I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real. (Walt Disney, 1935)
Walt Disney comments on the need of the exaggeration of the real for it to assist with the fantastic. For instance, in the Disney Studios’ short films, the important principle of ‘squash and stretch’ and ‘exaggeration’ can be seen, in their artistic application, in Trolley Troubles, from 1927. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is drawn in the short film with subtle squash and stretch, but the trolley in particular is being squashed and stretched to the audience’s delight, expanding the initial physical need for this specific principle to organic movement, by giving it an artistic spin for the sake of storytelling and comedic effect, and applying it to the inorganic matter of the trolley. This does not yet have the sophistication of the later application of ‘squash and stretch’, but it deploys a significant morphing of characters and objects that supports storytelling and entertainment value.
Disney’s goal was always to bring onto the screen animation characters that the audience could believe in. Therefore, the animators had to explore ways of bringing this believability into their characters and the 12 principles were the way of achieving this life-like movement and emotional connection. Life-like, however, does not mean realistic, and Walt Disney himself never wanted to mimic nature or create realistic animation. Here, I am purposely using the term ‘life-like’ instead of Wells’ established term ‘hyper-realism’ since the application of the term by Wells for Disney’s traditional character animation not only significantly increases animation’s ability to recreate natural movement through digital animation, but also hyper-realism conflicts with the very same term in fine arts, represented by artists like Ron Mueck or Duane Hanson (Wells, 1998).
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Walt Disney’s goal was clearly focused on life-like movement and subtle stylization as he stated in an inter-office communication on 23 December 1935: The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen – but to give a caricature of life and action . . . The point must be made clear to the men that our study of the actual is not so that we may be able to accomplish the actual, but so that we may have a basis upon which to go into the fantastic, the unreal, the imaginative – and yet to let it have a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity and contact with the public. (Walt Disney, 1935)
Disney’s goal of producing characters that additionally ‘contact with the public’, required the analysis of the characters’ personalities and their performances to be based on psychological traits. The rising complexity of the characters’ ability to feel and express believable emotions in Disney’s film output during the 1930s required such a step if the characters were not only to be believed in, but empathized with, by the audience. Slowly, the importance of the principles crystallized and became the creative guidelines for Disney animation. Thomas and Johnston (1981: 47) describe the development of the 12 principles from their perspective as follows: The animators continued to search for better methods of relating drawings to each other and had found a few ways that seemed to produce a predictable result. They could not expect success every time, but these special techniques of drawing a character in motion did offer some security. As each of these processes acquired a name, it was analysed and perfected and talked about, and when new artists joined the staff, they were taught these practices as they were the rules of the trade. To everyone’s surprise, they became the fundamental principles of animation.
These explorations permitted a cartoon aesthetic to evolve that was life-like, believable and emotionally engaging, which would ultimately culminate in the ‘Disney style’ or period of ‘Disney Formalism’ (Pallant, 2010). The studio’s refined animation pipeline allowed all artists to follow the same production path with its 12 principles, thus structuring a young and still evolving industry’s workflow towards a streamlined and professional production.
Over the last 40 years, since the publication of Illusion of Life: Disney Animation in 1981, the 12 principles of animation have been widely discussed and applied, not just in traditional animation production but likewise increasingly so in digital media. In 1987, John Lasseter wrote an article on how to translate the 12 principles of animation into new forms of computer animation. Lasseter slightly adjusted the list by surprisingly ignoring ‘solid drawing’ without giving a reason, and therefore listed only 11 principles, despite mentioning ‘drawing’ repeatedly. Lasseter also added ‘personality’, not as one of the principles, but as an added point dominating all other principles. Lasseter states ‘Personality in character animation is not a principle unto itself, but the intelligent application of all of the principles of animation’ (p. 43). The missing principle of ‘solid drawing’ seems, at first glance, to be obvious as drawing is clearly not a requirement for computer character animation. Drawing is not necessarily an obligatory step towards the final computer graphics (CG) image; however, it can be rather helpful if the animator is in control of the task of using drawing in the thumb-nailing of the performance’s development (Hosea, 2010). The question of how removing the principle of ‘solid drawing’ affects the totality of the principles in CG animation negatively will be explained later in this article. By adding the facet of ‘personality’, Lasseter extracts personality from Disney’s principle of ‘appeal’ and makes it its own overreaching element, very much like ‘story’ being the driving force of all that is done in animation, as story is the foundation of not just every storyboard and design decision being made but likewise every decision in character animation has story at its core.
Subsequently numerous other writers and animators have worked with and against Disney’s principles. In the publications From Script to Screen (1990) by Shamus Culhane, and in Preston Blair’s treaty Cartoon Animation (1994), the 12 principles of animation are mentioned in detail, but are embedded into a long list of further aspects including technical features as well as artistic qualities related to character size, colour, shape and form. Many of the points mentioned in these publications are sub-points within the explanations of the principles of animation in Thomas and Johnston’s Illusion of Life (1981), while some are more helpful additions. Explaining the animation principles that are significant to stop-motion animation, in 1998, Aardman Studios published their book Cracking Animation, The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley. In the section ‘Animation and performance’ the animation principles, which are named as such are defined as follows:
Movement: deals with the character’s performance and reference footage.
Posing the character: this not only deals with the character’s poses, but also with the moments between the action, the still moments of the performance.
Changing the pace: variation in the pacing of the action.
Anticipation.
Weight.
Momentum: this deals with ‘follow through and overlapping action’.
Acceleration and deceleration: different term for ‘slow in and slow out’. (p. 132)
The principles in Aardman’s publication do not differentiate, other than in their terminology and the missing principle of ‘solid drawing’, from the original 12, an argument for the veracity and longevity of Disney’s 12 principles and their applicability, for the most part, into non-2D techniques. Nevertheless, Richard Williams further explored hand-drawn animation in 2001, with his expansive work on character animation, The Animator’s Survival Kit (2001). He divides character animation into various topics that not only include the principles of animation but also discuss a wide array of topics.
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Williams’ work includes knowledge of some of the famous character animators from Disney and other Hollywood studios, like Milt Kahl, Art Babbitt, Ken Harris and Grim Natwick, who were all employed at various periods by Williams at his London studio and he himself improved his skills in the art and trade of animation by learning from their teachings. Williams does not explicitly mention the 12 principles of animation in his book but he discusses their physical and artistic applications in the various sections. Williams’ book adds to the 12 principles’ universality in animated movement and their broad artistic utilization, yet additions have since been suggested. In 2007, Carol McGillivray argues: The fact that the twelve animation principles have stood the test of time and have been adapted successfully to new methods of animating such as 3D CG means that they underpin most animators’ work today every bit as much as they did the animation on Disney’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a lifetime ago. (p. 1)
Nevertheless, McGillivray expands the initial principles to 13 by adding ‘isolation’, which refers to the fact that movement attracts attention. As she argues, ‘Isolation refers to centralizing a character and its movement. If one character is gesticulating wildly in a scene, you don’t want another to join in or the viewer’s eyes will shift away from the main action’ (p. 5). Lasseter (1987: 38) likewise refers to this point of ‘isolation’ in his paper from 1987 on the principle of ‘staging’. He writes: It is important, when staging an action, that only one idea be seen by the audience at a time. If a lot of action is happening at once, the eye does not know where to look and the main idea of the action will be ‘upstaged’ and overlooked. The object of interest should contrast from the rest of the scene. In a still scene, the eye will be attracted to movement. In a very busy scene, the eye will be attracted to something that is still.
Where Lasseter stays for the most part within the expansion of the initial 12 principles and exclusively applies them to CG animation, other writers and animators have refined the principles further. More recently, Walt Stanchfield, an animator and lecturer at the Disney Studios, in his publication of Drawn to Life (Stanchfield, 2009), a compendium of his many lectures at the studio, expands the 12 principles of animation dramatically and actually lists 29 points that the drafts-person and animator need to know and use as part of their artistic trade. Stanchfield wrote his articles over a time period of 20 years, and his 29 points clearly go far beyond the initial 12 and, in some cases, are like those in the treatise by Culhane, Blair and Williams, expanding on elements already within the 12 principles of animation. His ‘28 principles of animation’ (p. 26) actually contain 29 principles, and include some of the initial 12. A similar approach to refining the principles took place in 2011, on the official webpage of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (2011), which further divided the ‘principles of physical animation’ by adding an additional set of ‘12 principles of emotions in animation’, which, in the form of questions, deal with the characters’ performances and the reasons for their actions, reactions and emotions. Many of the questions are also integral elements of storytelling, character personality and performance. Question 10 covers ‘simplicity’ (an aspect that will later be added to the final principles ‘staging’ and ‘pose’, see Table 2), question 11 deals with the procedure of preparing the animation and question 12 addresses the target audience. The 12 principles of emotions in animation are also all included in Hooks’ (2011) and Webster’s (2012), more recent lists of principles of acting. The previously mentioned expansion of the 12 principles’ application can be juxtaposed by a noteworthy stylistic interpretation in popular animation.The animator and animation director Chuck Jones, famous for his unique style of animation timing and anticipation at Warner Brothers, which he often pushed to its artistic limits, likewise confronted the principles of animation, thereby suggesting their influence beyond the Disney studio. In 2012, he released the video tutorial ‘A Chuck Jones Tutorial: Tricks of the Cartoon Trade’, which presented a list of eight points: ‘zip-out’, anticipation’, ‘primary and secondary action’, ‘overlapping action’, ‘cartoon exaggeration’, ‘natural animal movement’, ‘anthropomorphism’ and ‘animation of minutiae’ (Looney Tunes Showcase Volume 1, 2012). ‘Zip-out’, the quick exit of a character from the frame, is an artistic interpretation of ‘timing’ and ‘anticipation’, and provides a performance moment a specific term. The principle of ‘natural animal movement’ refers to the possible scale of ‘exaggeration’ as ‘natural animal movement’ is just the natural foundation of animal locomotion (excluding in Jones’ list human locomotion, which of course needs to be added for completion). ‘Animation of minutiae’, the reduction of the character’s performance to a simple glance or eye-brow movement, is an artistic interpretation of character performance, which will be discussed later in the section ‘Appeal’. Jones’ tutorial focuses on his own unique animation style, which does not expand the initial 12 principles by Thomas and Johnston but clearly stays within their boundaries, similar to other resources, which extract subpoints of the initial 12 principles and point out that they are sufficiently significant to be stand-alone principles. In 2014, on the animation webpage of the Animation World Network, a list was posted containing 14 principles, based on Natasha Lightfoot’s own post on an Animation Toolworks webpage, which adds ‘depth’ and ‘balance and weight’ to the list. Both are actually mentioned in Thomas and Johnston’s (Thomas, 1981: 53) 12 principles of animation in the principle of ‘solid drawing’.
In other resources, the added principles have more validation and inspire a detailed discussion about how they work in the development of character. In Webster’s (2012) publication, Action Analysis for Animators, four more principles are suggested as possible additions to the initial list of 12 principles, which he discusses in detail. The four additional principles are ‘drag’, ‘balance and weight’, ‘solid modelling’ and ‘energy flow’ (p. 63). Although Webster suggests in his first principle ‘drag’, that drag appears in gas or liquids that surround the character, which technically is effects animation, he also adds the movement of sleeves for instance, as being ‘drag’; however, this is already part of ‘follow through and overlapping action’, principles that have a rather broad application. His second addition is ‘balance and weight’ (Webster, 2012: 64). This principle has been likewise added by other authors (Stanchfield, Lightfoot, Culhane, Blair and Williams), which suggests there is clearly the need for this principle to appear in the list and be part of one of the principles. Both, however, are mentioned in Thomas and Johnston’s (1981: 53) 12 principles of animation in ‘solid drawing’. The third principle of Webster’s additions is ‘solid modelling’ (2016: 64). He describes the aspects of form, volume, space and surface values as an explanation for this principle and discusses the successful transition of the character’s design and appeal through the modelling process into the final character. It seems that Webster applies this principle only to characters that are ‘built’ and modelled, so CG and stop motion would be the target; however, this can also easily be applied to hand-drawn animation. The last added principle is ‘energy flow’ (Webster, 2012: 64), which Webster explains as follows: With a figure in motion it is possible to track the way energy is directed through the body as an action progresses. This capability may prove very useful in thinking about how the body shifts and rotates and how the various tensions and stresses within the figure contribute to an action or how they counter weights or stresses applied to the figure. (pp. 64–65)
Webster also states that the original 12 principles produced by the Disney studio need updating: Although these principles may have been useful to animators in the 1930s and 1940s who were striving to improve not only their own work but to raise the level of craft skills and in doing so develop the art form, they do not necessarily reflect all forms of modern animation. Since those early pioneers of animation first struggled with creating animated performances, the craft of animation has moved forward a good deal, and it may be that today’s principles of animation are slightly different from those identified in the Disney studio. At least there may be additional identifiable principles to be added to the original list as a result of those developments. The majority of these principles clearly remain relevant to animators working in any discipline, despite the fact that these were established before any form of digital animation was available. (p. 52)
Webster’s suggestion here carries great importance for the development of the principles for the study of animation. The following detailed analysis of the initial principles of their content and terminology therefore provides a restructured list that relies on the suggestions of a number of animation resources as a way of rethinking and reconceptualizing the original set of principles.
Analysis
The enumeration of some of the examples of animators and educators who discuss and offer additions to the 12 principles of animation suggests that the initial list by Thomas and Johnston, though exceptional in its simplicity and ongoing validity, is in need of expansion as a response to the artistic and technical demands of animation and its variety of approaches. To open up the application of the principles into all animation techniques alike, a cross-section of the original principles of ‘squash and stretch’, ‘anticipation’, ‘follow through and overlapping action’, ‘arcs’, ‘staging’, ‘straight ahead action and pose to pose’, ‘solid drawing’ and finally ‘appeal’ can be further dissected and discussed in detail. Stop motion, computer animation (including games and motion graphics) and a number of experimental techniques will be included in this discussion, giving the principles a wider scope, but also unifying the range of animation techniques rather than focusing on their differences.
Squash and stretch
The most common application of ‘squash and stretch’ in animation is warranted by physics. A character that is jumping, when gaining the momentum for the jump, will crouch down and squash and then stretch when leaping up into the air, releasing the stored energy of the squash into the stretch. In another example, a character who is chewing food with pleasure can show the forces created in the deformation of the face through exaggerated squash and stretch, thus pushing the entertainment value. Both examples go back to the physical needs of that action. However, there are also the emotional and mental aspects of ‘squash and stretch’ for organic or inorganic elements. For instance, in Tex Avery’s short film Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), the wolf’s eyes stretching out longingly towards the female dancer, Red, signify his highly aroused state. It is the same with the bouncing ball: it can either squash and stretch because of the physical needs of its weight and material, with external and internal forces causing the bounce, or the ball eagerly wants to bounce, thus reaching out (stretching) to get closer to the ground in anticipation of hitting the ground. ‘Squash and stretch’ can therefore be divided into two sub categories relating to its application: physical and emotional/mental.
‘Squash and stretch’ is a principle that is easiest to apply in hand-drawn animation, but it is also widely used in CG animation. In stop motion, this principle is less feasible, however, applied in part. George Pal, the inventor of replacement animation for stop motion, was using the technique of squashing and stretching the wooden puppets in his Puppetoons series already in the late 1930s. Replacement animation is also applied in Claymation: for instance, in Aardman Animation’s work (the Wallace and Gromit series or The Pirates! Band of Misfits, 2012). With the rise of replacement animation through digital printouts at, for instance, Laika-Studios (starting with Coraline in 2009), ‘squash and stretch’ has been rising in its importance in stop-motion shorts and features. This introduction of digital processes into stop-motion animation is starting to blur the lines between the two animation techniques, shifting the handcraft quality and unique aesthetic of stop motion toward the precision of digital animation.
Anticipation
This principle was explained by Thomas and Johnston
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as follows: This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation. (Thomas, 2011)
O’Connor (2018) also adds to ‘anticipation’ the aspect of ‘overshoot’, the idea that an action starts with the anticipation, then is overshot in its movement to finally settle down. This is again an exaggeration of natural occurrences, so it does not necessarily need its own sub point but could be added for completeness. Richard Williams (2001: 285) calls ‘overshoot’ an ‘accent’.
As with ‘squash and stretch’, ‘anticipation’ can be divided into two sub categories: a physical anticipation (the example of the dancer leaping off the floor) and an emotional or mental anticipation, mentioned on Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s webpage (Frankandollie.com) as ‘. . . change expression’.
As a result, ‘anticipation’ not only prepares the audience for a physical action that is about to happen, but also prepares for an organic or inorganic character’s emotion or thought. Emotional or mental anticipation deals with the preparation of a character’s thought, an emotional action, reaction or change. It provides the audience with an additional aid in understanding how the character’s inner life is increased in its readability and understandability. This type of anticipation is not needed for the physical action to be performed, but does often accompany it (for instance, in the form of a simple blink of the eyes to prepare the physical anticipation with a mental one).
Follow through and overlapping action
The principle of ‘follow through and overlapping action’ deals with the continuous progression of forces through the body and its effects on the various appendages. Limbs, clothing and accessories or hair are affected in their timing and motion, and so their movement is affected by an external force (like wind for instance) and/or a force that has been transmitted by a connected body part. These forces usually reduce steadily outwards and release their energy at their furthest point from the body. If we see this principle as ‘progressing forces’, which ‘follow through and overlapping action’ contains, we can add Webster’s principle of ‘energy flow’ to the list as it does give this principle an additional aspect that is rather significant. Webster (2012: 6465) explains: With a figure in motion it is possible to track the way energy is directed through the body as an action progresses. This capability may prove very useful in thinking about how the body shifts and rotates and how the various tensions and stresses within the figure contribute to an action or how they counter weights or stresses applied to the figure.
As ‘energy flow’ does deal with the translation of energy/forces from one part of the body to the next, it is within the same realm as the principle of ‘follow through and overlapping action’ where likewise energy/forces progress through the body. The question arises whether those specific forces Webster is describing are a very complex combination of the principles that deal with physics already, or are their very own aspect within this principle of ‘follow through and overlapping action’. The concept of ‘energy flow’ is part of what Mike Mattesi (2008) describes as ‘directional and applied forces’ which is more of a concept in figure-drawing and then applied to hand-drawn animation but does not yet have a counterpart in either of the two other animation techniques (in experimental animation it depends on the technique applied). In Mattesi’s concept, these forces are not only the actual physical forces of the body, but also the aesthetic forces that can be exaggerated through the line itself and its design and flow. Webster’s suggestion of ‘energy flow’ not only includes Mattesi’s concept, but also allows it to be expanded to stop motion, CG animation and experimental animation equally.
‘Drag’, the principle that Webster also added, is not dramatically different from ‘follow through and overlapping action’, so can perhaps be eliminated, and in its place the term ‘progressing forces’ ultimately covers the following three sub points:
Follow through
Overlapping action
Energy flow.
Arcs
Arcs, in animation, define the trail of the movement of the character and its single elements, as everything moves on its own arc if a smooth, life-like movement is to be achieved. In reality, movement does not just happen on single arcs, of course, but on continuous paths. Breaking them into arcs is not only a necessary simplification of the continuous paths, but also defines what happens between two keyframes, which the arc is so clearly attached to. If we then break down arcs into their single elements, we arrive at the two keys that frame the beginning and end of the arc, and all single frames in between. Those are already defined as keys, extremes, breakdowns and inbetweens, and all form the arcs as their subdivisions. The hierarchy for movement would then be: Paths → arcs → keys, extremes, breakdowns → inbetweens.
By renaming the principle of ‘arcs’ into ‘paths’, we can add the subdivisions ‘arcs’ and ‘keys, extremes, breakdowns and inbetweens’. Breakdowns are rather crucial as they add more complexity to the movement by defining the movement’s unique path and timing in more detail.
Staging
‘Staging’ in Thomas and Johnston’s definition, not only deals with the character’s positioning within the frame (clarity, camera shots and angles, composition, mood), but also with the character itself (clarity, recognizable personality and silhouette), which is also part of the principle of ‘appeal’ in Illusion of Life (Thomas, 1981). The first aspect of ‘clarity’ is important to any kind of artistic expression for, without clarity, the point of communication, the very basis of image making, is obsolete and is therefore an overreaching aspect that affects all principles equally.
Nevertheless, adding character personality into the principle of ‘staging’ is unnecessary, as it is an overreaching aspect, like story, that affects all the principles significantly. This article suggests staying within the realm of the principle of ‘staging’ concerning the topics of composition and the frame, and not to include any character aspects as this would dilute this principle. If so, we clearly need to expand Thomas and Johnston’s description of ‘staging’, whose primary purpose is solely life-like Disney animation that reduces the visual and artistic possibilities.
By reconceptualizing the given aspects that this principle incorporates within its initial description, we obtain one that has a long list of sub points. The list here is again a compilation of options, where the animation artist applies each of the given aspects (to a degree) to their work. Not all have to be applied equally and some might not be applied at all. This article therefore suggests the following list of 19 points that bring together all possibilities of composition and background with the cinematic effect in mind. Some points in this list, such as ‘character staging and film language’ or ‘music and sound’, need to be further subdivided.
Composition
Character staging and film-language (including camera shots and angels)
Vectors
Directions
Shape and form
Mood (emotional expression of setting and background)
Size
Depth
Light and shadow
Colour
Contrast
Perspective
Texture
Movement
Music and sound
Variation
Simplicity
Readability
Believability (within the established rules of the created world)
By removing ‘personality’ and ‘silhouette’ from the original list of ‘staging’, as both deal with the character, the focus of ‘staging’ is solely shifted towards composition and framing, not the character.
Straight ahead action and pose to pose
This principle has a very clear explanation in Thomas and Johnston’s typology, though Williams (2012: 61) also mentions a combination of straight-ahead action and pose to pose. This principle explains how the animation is achieved and which technical approach is used in hand-drawn animation. The initial hand-drawn approach to his principle often seems to easily lead itself to being ignored by practitioners in the fields of other animation techniques, as neither stop motion nor computer animation deal as much with drawing, aside from the developmental and preparational work in the form of thumbnails (in experimental animation it again depends on the technique applied). However, Lasseter (1987) does include this principle as applying to computer graphics’ use of keyframes, but he also writes about the ‘layer by layer’ technique where animators first deal with the trunk of the character and then work their way down a hierarchy.
Applying this principle’s content across these four techniques gives us the following:
2D traditional animation or 2D digital animation work very similarly, so a distinction is not required. However, the technical approach not only includes the actual animation process in hand-drawn animation, but also the preproduction work in the form of thumbnail drawings, the preparational work that then leads to animating. Thumbnails are also part of stop motion, CG and experimental animation. A unique technique in 2D animation is Rotoscoping, invented by Max Fleischer in 1915 and applied since 1918 in short films and then features. This technique works with a sequence of live-action frames and either traces the successive stills accurately or uses the movement as inspiration for the animated shot. Rotoscoping can be approached either through ‘straight ahead action’ or ‘pose to pose’.
Due to its artistic and technical range, more experimental animation is able to use either one of the two approaches of ‘straight ahead’ or ‘pose to pose’.
Stop-motion animation by its very nature is produced with the straight-ahead technique and cannot be achieved by pose to pose as the inbetweens cannot be inserted later. The entire animation must be finished in one go. For the initial blocking, keyframe animation is a common aid to staging and planning the poses and action; however, this is only done as a test for compositional purposes, but the test frames do not appear later on screen. It is a very different approach to stop-motion animation when it comes to facial replacement animation or digital print-out animation. So, the following points apply as this type of animation is prepared as CG animation, printed three-dimensionally and then shot frame-by-frame.
CG animation: in CG animation, the discussion of ‘straight ahead action and pose to pose’ is rather more complicated, as more techniques are still being developed or refined which go beyond the scope of the initial meaning of this principle, like motion capture, for instance. ‘Straight ahead action’ is impractical in computer animation as the computer calculates the inbetweens, so ‘pose to pose’, or keyframing is more functional for the animator (the same is true for some digital 2D animation or 2D digital puppet animation, which use the same practice of computer-calculated inbetweens).
Due to the different approaches in the four techniques, the term ‘straight ahead action and pose to pose’ again does not seem to be the most appropriate one as it refers to a hand-drawn approach. As a result, this article suggests ‘technical approach’, following Culhane’s (1990: 157) own term of ‘approach’ for the same principle. This terminology allows not only the inclusion of all animation techniques into one principle but also allows innovations, such as motion-capture, procedural pose animation and other techniques specific to digital animation, to be easily included into this principle. For stop motion, the term ‘technical approach’ could also include facial replacement animation and digital printing.
Solid drawing
If drawing is used as the foundation of this principle, we are missing the very point of what this principle is trying to achieve. During the process of drawing, shapes and forms are created, poses with a working line-of-action are developed accurately, poses are also artistically constructed (containing a myriad of technical and artistic decisions) and lines are obviously used to draw and interpret the character. If drawing is cut out of the equation, stop motion and CG animation do the very same: they deal with shape and form, still have to guarantee that the character’s pose is accurately constructed, have tension in the poses and make artistic and technical decisions. As Webster (2012: 52) writes: If one original principle laid down by these pioneer animators might not have made the transition to universal relevancy for all forms of animation, it is Solid Drawing. This is a principle clearly more appropriate to animators who work in 2D classical animation. Solid Drawing is still relevant and very useful for animation, but it generally applies to drawn animation of a particular type – one that depends on a more academic approach to form, the understanding of form often gained through observational drawing and academic life drawing.
Here, Webster only considers the technique of drawing, but does not take into consideration what is actually achieved with the character and the character’s pose during the process of drawing, aside from the technique of interpreting the character with lines. Drawing is about bringing the character onto the screen (or any other medium that is not projected on screen) in its physicality and interpreting the story moment through the pose. Does this idea of ‘pose’ then overlap with the principle of ‘staging’? Not if in ‘staging’ the position of the character within the frame is maintained, and in the principle of ‘solid drawing’ it is only dealt with in the character’s pose. This distinction will give each of the two principles its own unmistakeably and clearly defined field.
The principle of ‘solid drawing’ is described by Thomas and Johnston (1981: 66) as containing depth, weight, balance, dimensionality, twinning, 6 shape and volume. All clearly deal with the character’s pose. These, nevertheless, are only a few of the many aspects that are being used by a professional animator/drafts-person in creating and designing character poses, as Stanchfield (2009: 26) has demonstrated in his 29 principles, or Culhane, Blair or Williams in their publications. Many more aspects need to be mentioned for a comprehensive list to include more artistic options. The following list contains all the aspects that seem significant (the first seven aspects have already been mentioned by Thomas and Johnston, 1981).
1. Depth
2. Weight
3. Balance
4. Dimensionality
5. Twinning
6. Shape
7. Volume
The additional aspects that I suggest should complete the list are:
8. Form
9. Exaggeration
10. Anatomy
11. Body ratio
12. Colour design (mostly for character-design purposes)7
13. Contrapposto
14. Forces (Mike Mattesi, 2008)
15. Tension
16. Tension and compression
17. Pivot point and balance
18. Perspective
19. Fore shortening
20. Size relationships
21. Movement and twist
22. Light and shadow
23. Line of action
24. Vectors and directions
25. Contrast
26. Tangents
27. Reading direction
28. Surface and texture
29. Extroverted and introverted pose
30. Silhouette
31. Negative and positive space
32. Line quality (2D)
33. Straights and curves
34. Clothing design, folds and fabrics
35. Design of facial expressions
36. Textures and materials
37. Readability
38. Simplicity
39. Symmetry and asymmetry
40. Ground connection
41. Composition of pose and image
42. Relationships between characters
43. Storytelling and drama (as the foundation of all design decisions)
44. Believability (within the established rules of the created world)
45. On model
All of the 45 (except one, 32 line quality) can easily be applied to computer and stop-motion animation as posing is shared by all techniques. ‘Line quality’ (32) is the single aspect that only applies to hand-drawn animation, as there is no equivalent in either stop motion or CG animation (that is, CG animation that does not render a 2D aesthetic). However, it is not just the line itself, but the ‘quality’ of the line, how it has an artistic quality of tension, compression, flow, body and the line’s aesthetic ability to interpret story.
There is, nevertheless, some overlap in the content of the various principles. Silhouette (30) is, for example, already included in the original principle of ‘staging’, so there is clearly overlap in the system. For that reason, ‘silhouette’ was removed from the principle of ‘staging’ and added to this list, as it deals solely with the character’s silhouette, and thus is part of the pose.
‘Exaggeration’ (9) has its own principle in the 12 principles of animation, but could also be mentioned in these 45 aspects as well because it is not only the exaggeration of the action, forces and the movement, but exaggeration in every aspect of the figure’s pose to strengthen its visual communication. However, this is not a requirement as exaggeration is an overreaching principle that applies to all other principles.
‘Tension and compression’ (16) deals with the overall deformation of the body and the distribution of mass due to forces (very much like the principle of animation ‘squash and stretch’, however less focused on movement and more on the details in the pose), whereas the principle of ‘tension’ (15) deals with the pose’s and design’s compositional tension. 8 ‘Textures and materials’ (36) is a seemingly odd choice for character poses; however, the readability of the pose is also dependent on the overlapping elements of the pose in one or multiple characters, and the relationship between background and character. ‘On model’ (45) deals with maintaining the character’s design, based on its initial character turn-around and model sheets. This applies to all animation techniques equally, to sustain the character’s unique physical language and facial expressions, and therefore its recognizability.
As a result of the previous discussion, ‘solid drawing’ is clearly not the right terminology if we want to include all the other animation techniques in the list, so I would suggest the term ‘pose’ to describe the character’s physical communication via body language and facial expression, which nearly all 45 aspects in the list relate to. This new term is also in line with the principle of ‘solid drawing’ in CG animation, as mentioned in David Andrade’s educational video series 12 Principles of Animation for CG Animators (2016), in which he also expresses that ‘solid drawing’ ‘meant focusing on clean, clear lines for all the 2D animators. As a CG animator, it means focusing on clean poses, and using only the controls that you need, and not any more.’
Appeal
Appeal is the one principle that is the most elusive and the least comprehensible. It is defined by Thomas and Johnston (1981: 68) as a quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, communication and magnetism, though this is not precise enough to fully convince. Much of this definition seems to go back to personal preference and ‘liking or not liking’ a character or how convincing a character is to the audience, which unfortunately does not help in defining this principle sufficiently. Thomas and Johnston’s definition of ‘appeal’ is geared towards traditional hand-drawn animation and vague terms like ‘pleasing design’ or ‘magnetism’ are rather subjective. Therefore, the initial description of the principle of ‘appeal’ cannot easily be applied to other styles of design (outside of the Disney aesthetic) or all other animation techniques. Many animated projects go for ‘awkward’ design which cannot just be dismissed as lacking appeal. So, again, the language needs adjusting to be more practical in its definition, with new terminology and the term ‘character’ instead, which then deals with the character’s personality and how its compilation goes hand in hand with the story and all related characters. Personality, as expressed by Lasseter, is an overreaching aspect that affects everything we do in animation, very much like story. But what exactly is ‘personality’? The complexity of personality and its composition of various traits is so vast and has so many variables, though most scientists at the moment agree on the HEXACO personality model (Ashton et al., 2004).
The next point within ‘character’ is character design and the visual representation of the character. This includes the character’s development from the first sketches to the final character, including character turnarounds in hand-drawn animation, character construction in stop motion and construction, rigging and texturing in CG animation.
Following the character’s design is the moment where Webster’s (2012: 64) suggestion of ‘solid modelling’ would fit in as it is then the entire process of character development from start to finish that is addressed (Webster’s point shares, however, elements with the aspect of ‘on model’ in the principle of ‘character/former solid drawing’). ‘Solid modelling’ includes the construction of the puppet in stop-motion animation, the modelling, rigging and texturing in CG and the character’s proper turn-around all in strong connection to the initial design. The principle of ‘character’ is therefore the successful translation of the design onto the screen (experimental animation in designing the character and preparing it for the character animation does not deviate from the other animation techniques).
Last, and very important, is the character’s performance. Here we can add the seven principles of acting 9 by Hooks (2011) on the one hand and Hayes and Webster’s (2012) six principles of performance on the other, as they both, in the author’s opinion, support each other. Additionally, we add ‘isolation’, which was suggested by McGillivray (2007) and which Lasseter (1987: 38) points out in ‘staging’. ‘Isolation’ at its core expresses that movement is the one aspect of design for the moving image that will always attract attention, no matter what; thus, the characters’ actions (or character and object) must not interfere with each other if there is no strong reason for doing so. Isolation (in McGillivray’s and Lasseter’s explanation) is strongly connected to the character’s performance and thus should be added to this principle. The list for the principle of ‘character’ (former ‘appeal’)’ would be:
Character personality (with one of the personality models, HEXACO for instance).
Character design (with the 45 aspects of the principle of ‘pose/formerly solid drawing’) and the character’s construction in all animation techniques.
Solid modelling.
Character performance (Ed Hooks’ seven principles of acting and Hayes and Webster’s six principles of acting) plus isolation.
With these four points, the evolution of the character from personality through the entire design process and the character animation is encompassed into the one principle of ‘character’, thus removing the initial unprecise term ‘appeal’.
Conclusion
This article has identified the need for the refinement and adjustment of the initial 12 principles of animation in order to better align with contemporary animation’s wide artistic and technical scope. The digital shift in the last 30 years in animation has not changed the three main topics that the 12 principles essentially deal with: physics and forces, character and composition, and technique. Shifting some of the content from one principle to another and renaming various principles for inclusion rather than exclusion of the miscellaneous animation techniques creates a list of principles that fit all animation techniques. Using the suggestions of other authors and artists who have worked both with and against the principles, the list includes valuable artistic and technical knowledge from a wider variety of sources. With this new list, we can streamline the content, but also give the principles more depth and structure as each now has a very defined purpose, no longer overlapping with any other principle. A clarification of each principle also avoids misinterpretation.
To structure this original list, we need to investigate the foundation of each of the principles and will find three central areas. Some of the principles deal with physics and forces (‘squash and stretch’, ‘anticipation’, ‘follow through and overlapping action’, ‘slow in and slow out’, ‘arc’, ‘secondary action’, ‘timing’, ‘exaggeration), others with artistic, character-related and compositional aspects (‘staging’, ‘solid drawing’, ‘appeal’) and one with the technical approach of producing the animation on paper (‘straight ahead action and pose to pose’). All animation principles are equally affected by story and character personality. This rearrangement of the 12 principles also clarifies how the principles relate to each other, but also what differentiates them. This then gives us the adjusted and new list in Tables 1 and 2 of the 12 principles of animation according to the analysis in this article. Table 1 has the three themes of physics and forces (1–8), character and composition (9–11), and technique (12) arranged differently compared to the initial 12 in Thomas and Johnston’s (1981) list. In Table 2 each principle is then broken down into its various sub points.
The 12 principles of animation divided into three themes.
The 12 principles of animation broken down into their various sub points.
‘Pose’ and ‘character’ are combined into one principle as they are very much related. ‘Pose’ deals with the technical and artistic aspects of the character, whereas ‘character’ deals with the design, personality and the performance. However, combining the two into one would increase the already challenging complexity, considering the myriad of sub points for both and it would also reduce the 12 to 11 principles of animation. Keeping the number 12 pays tribute to the animators who developed them.
The new list of rearranged, renamed and adjusted principles will give each a noticeably clear purpose and its content does not overlap with that of any of the other principles any more. This will streamline the principles and give them structure, thereby avoiding confusion.
The discussion in this article of the 12 principles of animation is still based on my own background, which is drawing, design and character-animation for 2D and computer animation, so the list is still likely to read as incomplete. However, I hope its formulation here will start a broad discussion that, in turn, leads to an update of the principles of animation. Reconceptualizing the list of principles, after nearly 85 years of use, seems necessary and will unify the various animation techniques rather than highlighting their differences.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I especially want to express my gratitude to Christopher Holliday for his invaluable input in shaping this article. Additional acknowledgement goes to Sean Lacey for editing advice.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and publication of this article, and there is no conflict of interest.