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 Follow Through and Overlapping Action principle, so now with no further adieu, let's continue our series with the sixth principle: Slow In Slow Out

Slow In Slow Out refers to how an object needs time to accelerate and slow down as it moves. Typically, an animation looks more realistic if there are more frames at the beginning and at the end of an action to depict this increase and decrease in speed.

In our example animation above, we apply both Slow In and Slow Out to the brown bag as it slides across the screen. There's a slow increase in speed as the bag starts to slide and also as it comes to a halt with fewer frames being seeing in the middle to give the appearance of acceleration, as you can see from the image below:

Hope you've enjoyed our interpretation of the sixth principle, tune in next month for principle number 7: Arcs and in case you missed it check out our version of the fifth principle here: Follow Through and Overlapping Action!