Physics Behind Basic Animation

Animation

Animation is a series of images that are places one after another to produce the illusion of movement.

Just like most art forms it takes practice to become really good at animating. Computers have helped to make animation a quicker and simpler process then it once was. Now computers have been used in almost every animated film that has come out in the last ten years. Because of this animation quality has improve dramatically to the point that animated characters are serving as major characters in many of the top movies today. This includes characters such as Ja-Ja Banks in Starwars, The many dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park movies, and Gollum in the Lord of the Ring movies.

If any one has ever watched some of the really old animation such as Steamboat Willy done by Walt Disney Studios in the late 1920’s or some of the animations showing up on the Internet nowadays. They know that animation has come a long way and is still improving.

Animation is found in early morning cartoons, computer games, movies, commercials and the Internet. We see it almost every day.

Principles of Animation

Around the 1930’s Walt Disney helped to set up drawing classes for his animators. The object of these classes was to teach the animators a new way to animate objects to make them more life like. The students studied the movements of the human figure and animals. They would play clips from live action movies over and over just to study the different aspects of the actions.

Through time a set of procedures and principles were used to help teach the new methods to other animators. These principles are still used in animation today.

They are:

1. Squash and Stretch

2. Timing

3. Anticipation

4. Staging

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

6.