{"id":45707,"date":"2014-09-19T11:11:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T15:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/?p=45707"},"modified":"2014-09-19T11:13:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T15:13:52","slug":"the-illusion-of-life-a-qa-with-cento-lodigiani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/the-illusion-of-life-a-qa-with-cento-lodigiani\/","title":{"rendered":"The Illusion of Life: A Q&A with Cento Lodigiani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditional animation principles meets modern motion design software in \u2018The Illusion of Life\u2019 created by Cento Lodigiani.<\/h2>\n

Modern tools have made animation and motion graphic design much easier than ever before. Instead of having to draw each frame by hand, animators and designers can use computers to easily create amazing animations in no-time.<\/p>\n

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However, it can be really easy to jump straight into animation without having a good background to help you understand why certain things look good and other things do not. Over the years many artists have perfected the art of animation and along the way they\u2019ve created a few principles that can help give life to your animated characters. These artists come from a variety of different animation studios but perhaps the most famous and innovative animation comes from Disney Animation Studios.<\/p>\n

For decades Disney has been well known for their storytelling, art, and lifelike animation. Even a kid can tell the difference between an animated Disney film and a film created by another company, but why is that?<\/p>\n

In their insightful book, The Illusion of Life<\/a>,\u00a0 Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston share their secrets as to how they perfected the \u2018Disney\u2019 look<\/strong> while working as animators at the Disney Animation Studios during the golden era of animation. The book has become required reading for those looking to get into character animation and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking their designs to the next level.<\/p>\n

The book is loaded with tips and tricks to give the illusion of life to your characters, but one of the most helpful sections of the books comes in the form of 12 principles that can easily be applied to animations. The 12 principles are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Squash and Stretch<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Anticipation<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Staging<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action<\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. Slow In and Slow Out<\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Arcs<\/strong><\/li>\n
  8. Secondary Animation<\/strong><\/li>\n
  9. Timing<\/strong><\/li>\n
  10. Exaggeration<\/strong><\/li>\n
  11. Solid Drawing<\/strong><\/li>\n
  12. Appeal<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    All of these principles when combined create the charming \u2018Disney\u2019 style of animation that is so appealing to animators. These principles of animation are incredibly useful and important, but unfortunately until recently there weren\u2019t any good online resources illustrating the principles in action. That was until New York based animator Cento Lodigiani<\/a> decided to illustrate all 12 principles using a simple cube. The result is a short video that beautifully illustrates each principle.<\/p>\n

    If you haven\u2019t seen the video here it is. Notice how easy it is to give life to such a simple shape using these principles.<\/p>\n