This is pasted from OneNote. (enemy of the people)
What did you do?
I watched a long, dense video on different principles of animation. (And did anything but IDS for the rest of the month) (12 principles of animation – alan becker)
I was watching this long video on principles of animation, highlighting the different basics that I would normally not even think of (Think drag in capes, or a person’s arms stopping a moment after their body does). The amount of detail and work put into some animation is amazing; with that, you can’t just draw while trusting your own judgement. There is a reason principles of Animation exist: Consistency. It would be very easy to forget to follow through with the arms (I didn’t even know you were supposed to do that at all), let alone using all 12 principles of animation while moving a character a couple frames. Artists can use the principles like a checklist; they review the animation while watching for the principles where they can be applied. This would be much more consistent than an artist judging their own work to see if it ‘looks right’. I think that the reason we need these principles in animation and not so much film is because the human brain has experienced ‘animation’ in real life, with real people. They know how people move, and what they look like, because they have experienced that for their entire lives. However, on a piece of paper, they no longer look like people. They look like lines, that we imagine as people. So, the principles of animation are especially important in 2D cartoonish animation, because humans have a decreased ability of relating lines to people, and they need to be reminded of what objects/people look like when they move.