The ’12 principles of animation’ is almost the key essence of life within the animation world. Almost everything seen in a single cell or frame follows one of the key ’12 principles of animation’. Understanding this fundamental value of animation allows you to almost animate anything, from human beings, dinosaurs, aliens, trees or even cubes. All dynamic objects or creatures follow the same 12 principles and can be exploited around them, becoming far more exaggerated or realistic to develop a personality.
To be able to visibly show the ’12 principles of animation’ is vital in becoming an animator or scene director (but not limited to). So vital, where an animation job interviews you may be asked to create something as cliche as a bouncing ball animation to distinguish your personality in the animating world. Why a bouncing ball? Well, that is because a bouncing ball follows all ’12 principles of animation’. Something as simple as a sphere (or cube, or any other shape) can easily apply these principles and be used to tell a vivid story.
As seen from the video above, a simple shape can be used to tell a range of on-screen dialogue without the use of character voice or facial expression. Even though a simple shape doing a simple action is quite simple at first glance, we actually are crossing multiple actions off such as Spacing, Weight, Arcs, Squash & Stretch (refer to the first image). To learn the essence of animation, whether 2D or 3D, it’s almost a necessity to learn how a ball bounces. So much so, that even animators at Disney and other big studios use balls to block out their animations for feature films. As characters will be using the same functions of either running, jumping, fighting, etc… we’ll be able to distinguish one of each principle for every action. An example of this can be seen in the video below, where Big Hero 6 (animated film) uses a ball around the 46-second mark to block out the scene ahead before jumping the gun and using a live character.
To sum up the overall reason the ’12 principles of animation’ within a bouncing ball can be quite important is that the bouncing ball translates into advanced character animation. The example above shows that no matter how professional someone’s experience may be, relying on the basic fundamentals can create complex actions that can grasp the audience in front of the screen. Furthermore, scene block-outs using rough shapes help reach deadlines or even to help you have a better idea of what the screen composition may be.
If you only have 5 hours to provide a first draft of an animated film scene, it would be much easier to provide a rough block-out of a simple shape doing the required actions for the scene, instead of a fully rigged character and trying to move an entire skeleton that helps depict the scene. Overall, there is nothing other than benefits from mastering the ’12 principles of animation’ one way or another they shall find a way into the animation.