Principles of Animation: The Art of Appealing Motion Course Site

The famous “12 Principles of Animation” are the foundation for all animation learning and since they’re universal principles we will learn to apply them to many animation mediums in this course by drawing, stop motion, claymation, and puppeteering in After Effects.

After each lesson, you will have a demonstration and an assignment that you can follow along with free tools online or with items around your house and a free stop motion app on your phone.

The lessons include:

• The History of the Animation Principles
• The Science of Animation
• Squash & Stretch
• Slow In/Out
• Anticipation
• Overlapping Action
• Secondary Action
• Arcs
• Pose to Pose/Straight Ahead
• Timing
• Staging
• Exaggeration
• Solid Drawing
• Appeal

During the course our assignments will cover*:

• Flipbooks
• Thaumatropes
• 2D digital animation
• Animating in Procreate on the iPad
• Animating in After Effects (project file provided)
• Stop Motion Animation
• Claymation

* Each assignment could be completed in any of these mediums so there’s no need to have a fancy computer, expensive software, or an iPad.

You can complete this course even if you’re not good at drawing.

“It’s not about what moves, it’s about how it moves!”

I will also share my insights working as a professional animator on big movies like Avengers and Ready Player One and how I use these principles every day in my work.

The concepts covered here are not only for beginners but for every animator to apply in their daily work and be a resource for any time you’re stuck on how to add more appeal to your animations.

I look forward to seeing you in class and seeing your projects from the course.