The Illusion of Life Disney Animation Chapter 3

            It is most common for any art form to have some sort of structure to follow. Animation is no exception to this, for the animators; like the ones at Disney, have principles that they follow when making cartoons. The twelve principles of animation range from squash and stretch to appeal. When using these twelve principles of animation, there is much imagination and hard work that can be put into the field.

            When using these principles, everything has to be done properly. The drawing need to be solid, the timing has to be right, and everything needs to be set up and staged appropriately. When doing something like squashing and stretching  a cartoon character, you can make them do all sorts of actions ranging from exaggerated facial expressions, to being able to bend and change the shape of the character’s entire body. Animation has an anticipation element to it; something to build up suspense for the characters when they do their expressions and movements. Animation is a lot of hard work, so having a set of principles to follow will not only help structure the work, but also have consistency to go with it.

            The twelve principles of animation make up the basic setup for the work involved in the field of animation. There is still much more to animation than just these principles, but they do help lead up to the more creative parts of animation. Much work was and still is being done in the field with these principles in the minds of animators.