Animation
The vocabulary of animation
The 12 principles of animation, and the words animators use for drawings, frames, characters and rigs. Press a term to watch Bean act it out.
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Each button plays one term and tells you what it is called. It repeats so you can study it; turn on slow motion to see the detail.
The 12 principles of animation
From Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's book The Illusion of Life (1981). Still the shared language of every animator.
Drawings and frames
Animation is a series of still drawings. These words describe how many there are, and how they are spaced.
Character animation
The everyday jobs of a character animator: moving, blinking, talking and reacting.
Rigs and pivots
In 2D and 3D software, characters are puppets: a rig of bones, joints and anchor points you pose instead of redraw.
Styles
The look of how it moves, often from how it was made: drawn, cut from paper, shot on a table.
All terms
The 12 principles of animation
- Squash and stretchalso: Squash & stretch
- Things flatten when they hit and stretch when they move fast, but keep their volume: wider as they get shorter. The rigid ball on the left looks like it is made of stone.
- Anticipationalso: Wind-up, Prep
- A small move the opposite way before the main one: Bean crouches before it jumps. It tells the viewer something is about to happen, so they don't miss it.
- Stagingalso: Clear staging, Focus
- Present one idea at a time so it can't be missed. The others step back into the dark and keep still while Bean in the middle acts.
- Straight ahead and pose to posealso: Key poses, Keys and in-betweens
- Two ways to animate. Straight ahead draws every frame in order, which is loose and lively. Pose to pose sets the key poses first (the faint Beans) and fills in between, which keeps the timing under control.
- Follow through and overlapping actionalso: Follow-through, Overlap, Drag
- When a character stops, its loose parts keep going and settle after. The antenna lags behind as Bean moves, then swings past and wobbles to rest.
- Slow in and slow outalso: Ease in and ease out, Cushioning
- Moves start and stop gently. Animators draw this as spacing: the faint balls are the drawings, bunched up at both ends and wide apart in the middle, where the ball moves fastest.
- Arcsalso: Arc motion
- Living things move along curves, not straight lines: a thrown ball, a swinging arm, a turning head. A path that goes straight looks mechanical.
- Secondary actionalso: Secondary motion
- A smaller action that supports the main one and adds personality, like waving while walking. It should never steal attention from the main action.
- Timingalso: Number of frames
- How many frames an action takes, which tells the viewer how heavy something is. The bowling ball drops in a few frames and barely bounces; the balloon drifts down over many.
- Exaggerationalso: Push it, Caricature
- Push a pose or reaction further than real life so it reads instantly. Bean doesn't just look surprised: it shoots up, its eyes double and its arms fly.
- Solid drawingalso: Volume, Form
- Drawing things as solid forms in three dimensions, with weight and volume that hold up from every angle. Animators practise on boxes and spheres turning in space.
- Appealalso: Charisma, Readable design
- A design the audience wants to watch: clear shapes, big readable eyes, a hint of attitude. Bean starts as a plain box and turns into a character.
Drawings and frames
- On onesalso: Full animation, 24 drawings a second
- A new drawing on every frame: 24 a second. Smooth and expensive, kept for fast action and big moves.
- On twosalso: 12 drawings a second
- Each drawing held for two frames: 12 a second. The standard for hand-drawn animation; it reads as smooth and costs half the drawings.
- On threesalso: Limited animation, 8 drawings a second
- Each drawing held for three frames: 8 a second. Choppier, with a snappy, graphic feel common in anime and TV animation.
- Smear framealso: Smear, Smear drawing
- On a move too fast to follow, one drawing stretches the object into a streak along its path. At full speed you never notice it; you only feel the speed. Turn on slow motion to see it.
- Multiplesalso: Multiple images, Ghosting
- Another way to draw a fast move: copies of the object along its path in a single drawing. Common in cartoons for whipping limbs and spinning legs.
- Onion skinningalso: Onion skin, Ghost frames
- The animator's view of the frames around the current one: earlier drawings in red, later ones in green, faint like layers of onion skin, so each new drawing lines up with its neighbours.
- Moving holdalso: Living hold, Hold
- When a character holds a pose, it keeps drifting a little and blinks, so it stays alive. A dead hold (left) freezes completely and looks like the film stopped.
Character animation
- Walk cyclealso: Walk, Cycle
- A few drawings of one step with each foot, looped so the character can walk forever. Bean is highest when its legs pass each other and lowest when a foot lands.
- Run cyclealso: Run
- Faster than a walk, with a forward lean, bigger swings and a moment where both feet are off the ground.
- Blinkalso: Eye blink
- The eyes shut over two frames and open over three. Animators also hide quick eye moves inside a blink, as Bean does when it looks the other way.
- Lip syncalso: Mouth shapes, Visemes, Phonemes
- Matching mouth shapes to the sounds of the dialogue, not the letters. A small set of shapes (MBP, AI, E, O, FV, rest) covers almost every word.
- Double takealso: Take
- Bean glances at something, looks away, then realises and snaps back with a big reaction. A take is any big reaction; the double take times the joke on the second look.
Rigs and pivots
- Rigalso: Skeleton, Bones, Armature
- A skeleton of bones and joints inside a character. The animator poses the bones and the drawing, or skin, bends with them.
- Forward kinematicsalso: FK
- Posing a limb joint by joint, from the root out: rotate the shoulder and everything below follows, then rotate the elbow. Good for swinging, flowing moves.
- Inverse kinematicsalso: IK
- Move the hand (or foot) and the software works out how the joints above it bend. Good for limbs that have to touch something: feet on the floor, hands on a table.
- Anchor pointalso: Pivot, Origin, Registration point
- The point a layer rotates and scales around. The same rotation looks like a spin with the anchor in the centre, and a swinging sign with it on the corner.
Styles
- Line boilalso: Boiling lines, Wiggle
- Each frame is traced again by hand, so the outlines never sit quite still. Once a flaw of hand-drawn animation, now a style on its own.
- Cutout animationalso: Cut-out, Paper cutout
- Characters made of flat parts pinned at the joints and moved a little each frame, like paper puppets. The parts turn but never bend or squash.
- Stop motionalso: Claymation, Stop-frame
- Real objects moved by hand and photographed one frame at a time. Every frame is a little off and the light flickers, which gives it its handmade jitter.
- Rubber hosealso: Rubber hose animation
- The 1920s and 30s cartoon style: arms and legs like bendy hoses with no elbows or knees, and everything bouncing to the beat of the music.
- Limited animationalso: Limited, Held cels
- Only what has to move, moves: the body is one held drawing and just the mouth and eyes change, on threes. The TV and anime way to make a lot of animation on a small budget.