Timing – The Ninth Principle | Principles Of Animation

TIMING – In this topic, we will now discuss and learn the ninth principle of the 12 principles of animation, timing.

The 12 principles were introduced by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, both of which are Disney animators who wrote this in their book called The Illusion of Life: Disney.

The ninth principle says that the personality and nature of an animation is greatly affected by the number of frames placed between each main action.

It refers to the number of drawings or frames in a given action, which results to the speed of the action. It also has to make the objects obey the laws of physics.

According to AnimationMentor, this involves two things: the first one is the speed of the object and the other is how long it will stay still. In other words, it is like two types of energy: potential and kinetic.

Slowing down an object would mean adding weight, gravity, and mass to an object. This can be achieved by adding more drawings and put them closer together. This also works when you make actions using the pose-to-pose method.

Speeding it up, on the other hand, will give the object the sense of speed, lightness and energy.

In this principle, when animating, the standard or the usual rate is 24 frames per second (24 fps), that is, in terms on movies. There are countless methods of drawing when using this principle in a 24 fps animation but we will learn two:

Drawing on Ones – refers to drawing each frame, thus, one drawing for each frame. It can be used when it involves a really fast action that has to be read
Drawing on Twos – the most commonly used. Of course, it refers to making one drawing for every two frames.

Here is a simplified video of the ninth principle, again by Alan Becker, the creator of the famous “Animator vs Animation” series.