Some animation techniques…

Squash and Stretch

The idea of squash and stretch is to add a more fluid believable movement to characters in animation. Taking a bouncing ball as an example of how it works, when the ball is at the peak height it would be perfectly round, but as it descends and goes down faster it would start stretching into an oval shape to show the speed it is going and when it hits the ground it will squash into an oval shape parallel to the ground showing the hard impact as it connects with the ground. Before stretching out again as it goes back up to its peak height.



Ease In and Ease Out

In animation it is vital to use easing in and easing out on most objects. Basically what this means is the slowing up and slowing down of an object to show real world physics. A car for example when it accelerates gets faster and faster over time it doesn’t just go from a standstill to 60 MPH in a millisecond the same goes for when its stopping, it gets gradually slower over time. To achieve this effect in an animation you just need to add more frames closer together at the start and end of your animation.

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Actions

These actions are all linked together in animation, starting of course with the primary action, in a walk cycle this would be the legs of the person walking, since walking is the main action this is animated first and everything else follows along with it, the secondary action in this case would be the arms moving along with the legs, to give an example, if the primary action was walking, the secondary action would be the arms swinging slightly and slowly but change the primary action to running then the secondary action would be the arms swinging greater and faster, but if the primary action was to be the arms swing, this wouldn’t effect the legs in anyway therefore isn’t the primary action in a walk or run cycle. The tertiary action is anything that follows through from the primary and secondary actions such as if the person walking is wearing a skirt or a long jacket, the movement of this would be effected by how slow or fast the person moves.