What Is the Most Valuable Principle of Animation in Your Opinion? How Do You Apply It on the Job?

Starting off with a tough question! I pretty much use every single one of them so choosing just one is a challenge. I think for students, it’s very important to get your arcs correct as soon as you can. Something like a bouncing ball falls apart if the path of the ball has pops in it. If you are animating a character performance, and you don’t manage the arc of that left arm for example, a pop in its arc will draw the eye and take the audience off of the true focal point of the shot. But if I based it on my most recent show, I’d probably have to go with slow ins and slow outs. Why would I pick that one? Well, we were referencing a lot of very stylized animation and if you watch any UPA shorts, you’ll see there are fast transitions and static holds all the way through. We found that long static holds that were successful in 2D animation just didn’t work as well for 3D, so we animated micro slow ins and outs of the held poses. Three or four frames of padding meant you could still feel the character was alive, but be true to the limited style we were referencing.

Guest Blogger Chris Williams