Here you take the first steps in the craft of animation with the “12 principles of Animation”, once invented and introduced by the 9 old men at Disney in the late 1930s and ultimately written down in 1981 by two of them, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, in the book “The Illusion of Life, Disney Animation”.

More precisely, explore, practice, train, experience, repeat... the principles such as squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, straight ahead action and pose to pose, follow through and overlapping action, arcs, secondary action, timing, exaggeration and so on,…

In the edit below you'll find an overview of all those exercises, starting with minimal stylized animal characters, progressing to animated poses and step cycles.

Technology used: Autodesk Maya