The Twelve Principles Of Animation

1. Squash and Stretch
This gives the illusion of weight or heaviness to a character as it moves. Squash and stretch is useful in animating writing or facial expressions. It is used in all character animation from a bouncing a ball to the  weight of a person walking.

2. Anticipation
This alerts the audience for a big action a character is about to do, such as running, jumping or facial expression's. Most action has major or minor anticipation 

3. StagingA pose or action that shows the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of a character in a scene. The effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps to tell the story. 

4. Straight Ahead And Pose To Pose AnimationStraight ahead animation starts at the first animation and works forwards until the end of a scene. It can be risky as size, weight, and scale can be lost with this method. Fast passed scenes are done this way. 

5. Follow Through And Overlapping Action
Follow Through is when the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main body, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail it all stops at different times. Overlapping is when the character changes direction whilst his clothes or hair continue in another. 

6. Slow-Out and Slow-In
Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs smoothen the action, making it more life-like. 

7. ArcsMost actions follow an arc or slightly circular path this can be seen in the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. 

8. Secondary ActionThis action makes the main action more innovative adding personality to the character animation. An example of this would be a character angrily walking toward another character; The walk is aggressive, forcing anything out the way and leaning forward.

9. TimingMore drawings between poses slow and smooth the action whereas fewer drawings make the action faster and crazy. 

10. Exaggeration

This is used to promote a particular mood, paced, formality of a scene it can make the scene static or dull depending on how it is used.

11. Poses

Every pose in animation has to have a structure to guide the viewer eyes with the right line of action. In every scene the pose has to have different strengths to make a pose believable and it also has to have the right weight distribution.

12. Appeal 

Appeal means something that the audience is attracted to. A scene or character should not be too simple  or too complicated otherwise the viewers will loose interest.