[ p l a c i d c h a o s / A M ]

Class this week was on the "Principles of Animation," which were conceived by the original Disney animators during the Golden Age of animation. It was mainly an overview so that as we progress in the following weeks everyone will be on the same page as far as terminology.

The 12 Principles of Animation:
1) Squash and Stretch
2) Anticipation
3) Staging
4) Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose
5) Follow Through and Overlapping Action
6) Slow In and Slow Out (ease in/ease out)
7) Arcs
8) Secondary Action
9) Timing
10) Exaggeration
11) Solid Drawing
12) Appeal

These are all elaborated on in chapter 3 of the "Illusion of Life," which was part of our assignment for this week. We were also to create a single pose with Stu, based off of one of our weekly sketchbook drawings. Here is my first attempt.

Here is a revision after receiving some feedback.

As you can see, I fixed his spine, adjusted his arm placement to create a better silhouette, and arched his body and turned his head more to create a sense of curiosity. This was our first week to receive video critiques from our mentors and Bobby gave me my critique this week due to Jason's critiquing tool not working. Bobby said that he liked how even though this is a still image, it felt like it had real movement to it. I agreed, but had others say that they didn't like the pose for that very reason; it's supposed to be and "feel" like a single pose. Oh well, either way it's still not perfect.