It's no secret that the 12 Principles of Animation are the fundamental building blocks for any animator. Get the hang of these basic techniques and you'll be on your way to understanding the language of animation.

First introduced in The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, these 12 principles have remained the quintessential roadmap for aspiring and experienced animators alike. Our animators are no exception! In fact, they have created their very own series of animation tutorials to explain the 12 Principles of Animation, using what you ask? Why, a brown bag, of course!

Last month we demonstrated the Squash and Stretch principle, so now with no further adieu, let's continue our series with the second principle: Anticipation

Anticipation prepares the audience for a major action from the character. A simple example to demonstrate this is when a character is preparing to sprint forward, they may first move back slightly which conveys them building up momentum and preparing to sprint while also letting the audience anticipate their next action which is to sprint forward. Anticipation helps to set up believable actions as almost all real action has major or minor anticipation such as a diver about to leap off a diving board, or a boxer swinging a punch.

In our example animation above, we apply the Anticipation principle to the brown bag as it leans backward in preparation of racing across the screen, as you can see from the image below:

Hope you've enjoyed our interpretation of the second principle, tune in next month for principle number 3: Staging and in case you missed it check out our version of the first principle here: Squash and Stretch!