This video is based on the Twelve Principles of Animation, as described by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Alright the 2nd principle of animation is called Anticipation.
This is when a character prepares for an action to give the audience a clue as to what is happening next
as well as to make the action appear more realistic.
One example is when a character is about to jump.
Before leaping into the air, he has to prepare for the action by crouching down to build energy.
It's like a spring that coils up before releasing.
Look at this character jumping without any anticipation.
It looks very unrealistic because the energy to jump comes out of nowhere.
here's another example: a punch.
To add power to the punch, and communicate to the viewers that he is about to punch,
he reaches his arm back, and then punches.
By contrast, having no anticipation results in a very weak punch.
You'll see this in a lot of cartoons.
Before running, a character will wind up before taking off.
In the previous video about squash and stretch,
this face actually uses anticipation as well.
Instead of immediately stretching up the face squashes first to anticipate the stretch and give it more power.
Anticipation helps communicate actions to the audience by preparing them for the next action
This can happen in many ways
If a character is about to take something out of their pocket
they make their hand very visible, and up in the air, before going into the pocket
otherwise the audience might miss it and wonder how they got that object in the first place
The most important thing is that the viewer notices the hand and the pocket
so the character cannot be performing any competing actions.
Let's say that something is about to happen on the right.
A character may prepare for that action by pointing their eyes and head to look in that direction,
leading the viewers to also look there.
It's important to make it as easy as possible for the audience to understand what's going on,
without having to watch it twice.
But this can also be used to trick the audience too
if you lead their eyes in one direction and then surprised them by having something happen on the other side of the screen
Taking anticipation a step further you can actually have multiple levels of anticipation.
Let's go back to our punch animation where the character winds up before punching
This animation has one level of anticipation
Now look at this one.
the character is actually winding up for his windup
by going forward, then winding up,
and then before punching, he throws his other arm back to further anticipate the punch
this punch is very complex.
It's actually similar to what a baseball pitcher does when he's getting ready to throw the ball
alright that's all I've got for Anticipation
The next principle is called Staging.
So thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video!