12 Principles of Animation with After Effects

Since Disney’s hand-drawn ani­ma­tion, noth­ing has changed when it comes to the basic prin­ci­ples of ani­ma­tion. The suc­cess of Dis­ney was not just in the design of Mickey and friends but in the way the char­ac­ters were put into motion.

At Saturday’s Ycad­emy Sem­i­nar we will explain the

and see, how to apply them with After Effects.

Accel­er­a­tion and decel­er­a­tion is cre­ated with Easy Ease in and out func­tions is AE. The effect cre­ates fluid motion.

Antic­i­pa­tion designs the action lead­ing to the actual move­ment, like the back­wards swing before hit­ting a ball with a golf club. Antic­i­pa­tion pre­pares the viewer for the action which will occur. Sur­prise actions can be more effec­tive with­out anticipation.

Squash­ing and stretch­ing blows life into a vol­ume. The rule is, not to change the vol­ume while design­ing the effect: a ver­ti­cal squash goes with a hor­i­zon­tal stretch.

Objects tend to move along an arc, rather than along straight lines. In After Effects we ani­mate along a path.

Straight Ahead Action refers to draw­ing frame by frame, while Pose to Pose refers to design­ing first the key-poses and then fill­ing in the frames in-between, hence the terms of “keyframe” and “tweening”.”

Stag­ing refers to the act of draw­ing the audi­ences atten­tion to impor­tant actions or events in the movie. It has to do with cam­era posi­tion­ing and han­dling and composition.

Well placed exag­ger­a­tion can make move­ments more interesting.

Fol­low Through refers to the motion of objects after the action while Over­lap­ping Action means that an action does not have to stop when or before another starts.

Sec­ondary action makes the prin­ci­pal action more inter­est­ing. While the prin­ci­pal action may be a man walk­ing, sec­ondary actions could be arm swing­ing, move­ments with the head and so on.

Speed of action impacts on per­cep­tion and emo­tion cre­ated. One of the most dif­fi­cult prin­ci­ples to mas­ter, often expressed with the dis­tance between two keyframes in After Effects.

This does not really refer to After Effects but to other pro­grams you may use to draw objects, such as Photoshop.

Objects need to be appeal­ing to draw in the audi­ence. This is not only true for ani­mated char­ac­ters. The best ani­ma­tion is not eye-catching if what you show is not designed in an appeal­ing or charis­matic way.

After Effects is not just about motion, it’s about expres­sion, design, appeal and emo­tion cre­ated. An ani­ma­tion designer is there­fore a multi-tasker and the best are multi-talents!

• 12 prin­ci­ples of animation
• prin­ci­ples of animation
• 12 prin­ci­ple of animation
• 12 ani­ma­tion principles
• after effects squash
• squash and stretch after effects
• after effect paper animation
• Squash and Stretch TUTORIAL IN AFTER EFFECTS
• over­lap­ping action drawing
• Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose ani­ma­tion principles

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Tags: After Effects, Principles of Animation

This entry was posted on December 15, 2011 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Animated 3D, Design, Digital Media Design, Media Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.