Applying the Principles of Animation

Um, I don't know why some of these GIFs upload with errors, but some do - To see them how they ACTUALLY look, please visit the animation gallery at my Deviantart here

 

Cat Jump

This animation contains:

Squash and Stretch- the cat is squished down a little bit when it prepares for its jump, then stretches out its body during the jump

Anticipation- The cat anticipates the jump by analyzing whether it can clear the height

Staging- The audience should be able to understand what the cat intends to do and does by seeing the counter and the anticipation

Straight-ahead and Pose-to-Pose animation- Drew the keys first then animated in-between

Slow in and Slow out- There are more poses when the cat is sitting than when it is actually in the air - Also, there are more drawings when the cat is at the apex of its jump than at the beginning

Timing and Spacing - There are fewer frames during the fast part of the animation (i.e., when the cat jumps up onto the counter) than during the slower parts (the anticipation, the land)

Arcs- The cat jumps in an arc movement, rather than straight up in the air

Solid drawing (some)- At the beginning of the animation, there appears to be some sense of weight and depth, but it disappears because I animated it in silhouette and a side point of view

Appeal- Apparently, people enjoy watching this thing, and think the cat is cute so... It has appeal

Cat Smash

This animation contains:

Solid drawing - You can tell in this animation that the characters (and hammer) are 3d

Ease in and ease out - The animation goes faster during the middle of an action but goes slower at the end of the action

Exaggeration - Um, dogs can't usually be squashed like a pancake and then pop back up in real life

Follow-through and overlapping - Drag affects the hammer as it swings forward and backward, and as the cat lifts it behind its head, the weight of the hammer causes him to become slightly unbalanced; however, there aren't really any overlapping actions here (that I recognize)

Anticipation - The cat swinging the hammer over its head, as well as the dog's expression, are both done in anticipation of the main action

Squash and Stretch - The hammer is squashed (and so is the dog) and stretched throughout the sequence

Arcs - The hammer swings in an arc forward and backward - to make this more realistic I should have had the cat swing the hammer beside its body to prepare for the hit instead of over its head

Timing and Spacing - There are fewer frames during the fast parts (i.e., when the cat swings the hammer downward) and more during the slower parts

Straight-ahead and Pose-to-Pose animation - The keyframes were drawn out first:

And then the inbetweens were added, and whilst in the middle of the tweens, I started finalizing the linework

Stupid Elf Who Reads Books Backwards

This animation contains:

..color?

I made this primarily because I missed Secondary action in the other two

I'm not even sure this can be called a secondary action because the head-scratch interrupts the reading, instead of overlapping the book reading (um.. onto the next paragraph!!)

Then Quinn pointed out the elf's apparent reading problem- I neglected to check if it was reading the book the correct way before I started to animate -_- (STUPID!)

I didn't want it to appear to read manga, so I tried switching around the frames where its eyes move- I guess that's better

I pretty much went straight-ahead on this animation; How many keyframes can you even have of someone lifting up their arm and scratching themselves? (That's so disgusting)

Maybe it has appeal?  I couldn't watch this for more than 15 seconds without getting sick of it.  What is appealing about revealing its dandruff problems, I don't even know..

It also contains an arc within the movement of its arm and solid drawing as it's shown from a 3/4 view and appears to have some depth to it as it lifts its hand behind its head

 in the meantime, 8-bit hug