Another Principle : PERFORMANCE

An additional Principle of Animation might be called PERFORMANCE .  The animation principles must always serve to create a believable, interesting , entertaining performance .  

[this next bit is paraphrased from an article on the 11 Second Club Blog on developing a demo reel ] -

"It comes down to this basic fact: people watch television, movies , cartoons, read comics,  play video games with one purpose and only one purpose, TO BE ENTERTAINED. 

Everything you ever animate,  ever, needs to be Entertaining. 

If it's not , STOP what you are doing, right away.  Figure out how to put Entertainment Value into your work. 

Unless you are simply experimenting by animating something to learn a  principle or technique , STOP NOW. 

Or unless you are entering some bizarre film competition, where the point is to make 95 people out of 100 want to punch you the face for forcing them to endure watching your boring animation , STOP NOW. 

If you don't know what is entertaining, or how to make a shot entertaining,  STOP , and seek the help of knowledgable people around you  - -  fellow classmates, animators , artists, actors , creative people of various stripes  - -  to look at your work and make suggestions for what you can do to inject entertainment into it.   (but don’t ask your relatives , significant others, or friends to look at your work for validation , they may give you less than objective feedback because they don’t want to hurt your feelings ;  you need someone to look at and critique the work with some objectivity.) 

If you still don't know how to make your work entertaining,  STOP,  and resolve to start watching as many good movies and television shows as you can with the goal of carefully analyzing what makes the entire film and the individual shots within that film entertaining.   (learn to start watching and analyzing films as a filmmaker , not as a consumer or a fan.  In addition to your classes at AAU , seek out resources like  Filmmaker IQ  ,  https://vimeo.com/filmmakeriq/videos ,  or Antonious Papantoniou's shot-by-shot breakdowns of the work of famous directors: https://vimeo.com/117709159 , among other free online resources)

If you still don't have any idea of how to inject Entertainment into your animation,  STOP, rethink your career choice. "

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On other posts I have shown examples of the work of animator Fred Moore , who was one of the key Disney animators in the 1930's and 40's who trained and formed the famous "Nine Old Men" group of animators at Disney .   Fred Moore was a master animator with a natural gift for staging and appeal and ENTERTAINMENT value in his animation.  

Master animator Ollie Johnston (who was mentored by Fred Moore) also records Fred Moore's personal "14 Points of Animation" , which were written out on a piece of paper and posted on Fred's drawing board , to remind him of important things he needed to include in his animation: 

Fred Moore’s 14 Points of Animation- 

1.) Appeal in drawing

2.) Clear Staging

3.) Are you staging and animating it the most interesting way? [i.e. would anyone other than your Mom want to watch it ?]

4.) Is it the most entertaining way?  [there's the E-word again !  -DN ]

5.)  Are you in character?

6.) Are you advancing the character?

7.) Is this the simplest statement of the main idea of the scene?

8.) Is the story point clear?

9.) Are the secondary actions working with the main action?

10.) Is the presentation best for the medium?  [ see the next 4 points , 11 - 14 .  -DN ]

11.) Does it have 2-dimensional clarity?  (Line-of-Action , Silhouette)

12.) Does it have 3-dimensional solidity?  (Solid Drawing, Construction, Perspective)

13.) Does it have 4-dimensional timing?  (Drag, Follow-Through, Overlap, Slow-in/Slow-out)

14.) Are you trying to draw something that shouldn’t be attempted?  (for example, like trying to animate a scene looking straight down at the top of Mickey Mouse’s head ?  Why bother staging something from such an awkward , difficult to draw angle  ? ... re-think the staging if need be. )