The next principle of animation we're gonna learn in this lesson is anticipation. And if there was a theme to all of these principles, I would say it's a theme of clarity and anticipation would be at the top of that list in prioritizing clarity in your animation, making sure your audience knows what's happening. So anticipation is an action before the main action that calls attention to the subject so that the viewer knows something is about to happen without anticipation, the viewer might not register the action you're animating at all or as well as they could if you had added some anticipation. Some common examples of anticipation that are physically required to do the action are things like throwing or kicking a ball and swinging a bat or a golf club because you can't perform those actions if you don't first do the opposite of the direction of the main motion. For me to throw a baseball or any kind of ball, I need to wind up my arm backwards in the motion that I'm going to be headed. So I need to go backward before I go forward and throw the ball.
So that's a common physical requirement. I can't throw a ball by just doing that. That's more like pushing a ball. Um, so there are physical requirements to some motions that they require anticipation. One other common example that falls in this category is jumping. So let's take a look at me out in the woods jumping on a log.
So for this example of anticipation, we're gonna look at a simple jump. If I was to not anticipate the jump, I couldn't jump on top of this log. You know, no anticipation means going from straight leg, it's just physically impossible. So when you're looking at character animation, you have to think of what is, um, you know, the character can actually physically do to make the motion look believable. And this also can apply to motion graphics and whatnot because the anticipation also tells the viewer that they're about to do something. So you pay attention to it before the action occurs.
So if I was to just jump straight from here, your eyes wouldn't be ready for it. Uh, just to, for me to physically be able to do it, I have to anticipate that jump, which for a jump means going down before I go up. So if I was to try to jump with no anticipation, I just physically couldn't do it, but if I anticipate it, I go down and now I can jump. So you can use this principle in all different kinds of ways in your animation. Hope that helps. So anticipation is also referred to as an antic that's kind of slang for anticipation.
So you might hear that term thrown around. You might need more antic or do less antic on this motion. So that's just something to be aware of as you get into animation more. And so we've seen that anticipation can be physically required of an action to perform that action, but it can also be used at, in the animators toolkit, just to call attention to something so that the viewer can register that's about to occur. And that way the audience will know the action is about to happen and then they can sit back and enjoy the way it happens. So that's a big distinction.
We wanna make sure that we're not doing things that the audience can't see. And anticipation is a way to signal to the audience that something is about to occur, to look over here. Anticipation can also be used to convey a sense of emotion or, uh, the mental state of a character if you're doing character animation. And anticipations don't always have to be big and obvious, like bringing your arm back to throw a baseball. They can be very, very subtle. They could be only a few frames, just like how squash and stretch was only just three frames.
And antic could be very short, very small, but it just helps just that little bit more to call attention to something or to help convey an emotional state of a character. So let's take a look at a couple of examples of a head turn. So the first is gonna be no antic. The second is gonna be a small antic, and then the third is going to be a big antic. So here is me acting first. We have no antic that communicates surprise or urgency.
Next we have a very small antic, which signals the head is about to turn and it's a more neutral state of the character. Finally, we have a really big antic that's a bit slow, which shows a heightened emotional state of the character. So with this example, we also showed that anticipation can be used to convey a sense of the emotional state of a character. And like the first example that we watched, anticipation can be excluded from the animation intentionally in the cases of surprise or an urgent moment for the character or if we're intentionally trying to surprise the audience. But that those are very limited cases. And normally we wanna make sure the audience is coming along on the ride with us in our animation and they're aware of what's happening.
But it is a time honored gag to build anticipation and then not pay it off. So have it anticipate one action and then have a surprise of something else totally different happening. So that's one way to kind of, you know, keep it interesting as well for the audience. And a, a nice tweak to using anticipation to build suspense and then not pay off what you're expecting to happen. It'd be like me, uh, raring back to throw a baseball and I'm really raring back, and then a baseball falls outta the ceiling and hits me on the head or something. So in this lesson we learned what anticipation was and that sometimes it's referred to as an antic.
We learned that anticipation can be physically required of emotion, and we also learned that it could be used to convey an emotional state of a character just depending on how much and how little or at all that you use the antic. And we also discussed the kind of building of expectations and breaking those down using anticipation in an interesting way to create a surprise if that's what you're going for as well. So in the next lesson, we are going to use this principle and we're actually gonna build on the previous two that we've already learned and add that to our repertoire of the animation we're gonna do for a pair of scissors. So I will see you in the next lesson where we will animate these scissors.