To review the principles we've learned so far,  we can recognize that they all have to do  with physics except for straight ahead and pose to pose. And so that just goes to show  how important understanding motion is  to creating appealing animation. Now, the next four principles, we're gonna discuss  that the nine old men of Disney coined are  all having to do with creating clarity in your animation  and your ideas, and how  that clarity can help you strive towards  appealing animation. Staging as a principle refers to the arrangement  of the elements  of your animation in the frame that you have. And so it could be akin to something like telling  where your actors to stand on a stage, play at a theater. You wouldn't tell them to stand  behind the curtain the entire play,  or face the opposite direction of the audience.

In the same way in our animations, we wanna make sure  that we're presenting our elements, whatever it is, motion,  graphics or character as clearly as we can,  and so that the audience knows what to focus on by the way  that they're arranged in the frame that we have. The clearest example of this is the silhouette. That is one of our big advantages in animation  and helps clearly communicate  what is happening in the frame, especially for characters. So an easy way that I test this when I'm doing 3D animation  in Maya is to hit seven on the keyboard,  which is the shortcut to turn off all the lights. And so what you get is basically the outline in a black  silhouette of the character. So let's try that experiment.

Now, if I wanted the audience to look at  what I'm holding my hand, like this thing,  should my silhouette look like this  or should my silhouette look like that? I'm looking at it ever. All my attention is going towards it. I'm holding it away from my body. So the silhouette looks nice. I'm not doing this either.

Should I be doing this? Would that make it more clear what's happening  that you should be looking here? So just  because you can animate something like this hand over here  doesn't mean you should. So clarity in staging what you're doing and silhouette  and in motion can help direct the attention  where you want it to be. Conversely to that example, you could have a ton  of motion going on in the frame  and your subject being totally still,  it could be they're gonna look at what's not moving as well. So you have all these elements to use at your disposal,  whether it's silhouette, lighting,  color, you know, motion.

You can use all of these things  to help stage your animation in the frame that you have so  that audience focuses on what you want them to focus on. Exaggeration is the next principle,  and it refers to kind of pushing the animation  to an extent that's beyond the normal bounds of the motion. And so that can be just for a a, a few frames even. It doesn't mean distorting the entire animation, the model,  the character, the design, um, for a long period of time. It means usually a very short amount, um,  in the actual motion. Or you could also exaggerate the idea of a subject as well  and caricaturing an idea very far.

Um, so it could be the micro  of the action that's occurring. And just for a few frames, just like in squash  and stretch, you might exaggerate how much squash  and stretch there is in real life, just so  that it's more readable to the viewer in frame. Now, one of the examples from my professional career  for this would be when I animated on Ready Player One,  it was a super fun movie to work on. And one example from that movie is the  actual characters on that movie were actors  that were captured in a motion capture performance,  and they had a camera that followed their face  around, attached to a helmet. And so we captured their facial performance  and that data was then stuck onto the digital character  and that we incorporated into the digital characters  animation even we,  we found when we used the facial performance of the actors,  that we still needed to exaggerate that performance  because when it was translated onto a digital character,  some of the performance was lost. Even though it was a one-to-one match,  it's exactly what they did.

There's some essence that is lost when you do  that translation in, um,  in a ethereal kind of, uh, intangible feeling,  the data is one-to-One, it's super accurate,  but the example that I had was in the eyebrows,  the character's eyebrows  felt like they weren't moving e enough. And so I would go back into those performances in my  animations and push them just a little bit  or exaggerate those areas so  that it would actually look more real. So exaggeration doesn't necessarily mean  always breaking reality. It could mean exaggerating something,  so it looks even more real. And so that's where you have to understand, you know, and,  and train your eye to see, uh, properly  how the audience will see it and,  and help guide your decisions on how and when  and how much to exaggerate these types of animations. So oftentimes in my animation, I'll find that boundary of  how much exaggeration is too much by going way big  with my exaggeration.

And then I can just, in the graph editor that we've seen,  I can just scale down the keys to their, uh,  towards their default values. So it's a, it can be a lot faster  and a lot quicker to go way  beyond the breaking point of exaggeration. And then just scale it down until it looks right, then  to constantly add a little bit, add a little bit more,  add a little bit more, add a little bit more,  add a little bit more to constantly be searching to where  that that level is just blow way big past it. And then, and then you can kind of decide where to come back  to so that, that might be more applicable  to something in a digital medium, like 3D  or 2D digital animation where you have a graph entered  and you can scale keys down. And so that's just a workflow approach that I wanted  to share on how I try  to achieve exaggeration in my 3D animations. The next animation principle has more to do with drawing,  but in spirit it can be applied to all animation mediums,  and that's the principle of solid drawing.

And if we were to translate this principle into something  like 3D animation where there isn't really drawing,  you would maybe call it solid posing. And the general idea is we want to correctly convey the  artistry of the model  or the element that we're manipulating in the animation. And so for drawing, that might mean staying on model. And, and in 3D we also try to stay on model. It's just with different tools. So in 2D animation, you might have a model sheet which shows  kind of the, the bounds of expressions  or poses that the character can be put in.

And the same can be true in 3D animation as well. And so you can know how, what are the bounds  that you can work within to create appealing poses  that are true to that character. 'cause you also have to think if you're working on a TV show  or a movie, there's gonna be other shots  and other animators working on the show. And it's also a way to make sure  that there's consistency in the drawing  and the draftsmanship and the quality of the artwork or, and  or in the posing of the character in 3D. Now, you might also hear animators sometimes say they're  cheating something to camera. And so that might just mean that,  that they might be breaking the model in other views.

This is maybe more in, you know, 3D animation. Um, and they'll say they're cheating something to camera,  and that means they're playing to the frame. They're playing to the camera,  where maybe if two characters are talking to each other,  they might actually point their,  point them this way a little bit just so that their eyes  and their face are directed towards camera,  even though the person they're talking  to is maybe just off center of that. So that's just an example  and goes to show that just  by saying I'm cheating the camera doesn't mean you're  breaking the solid drawing or solid posing rule. That actually means that you're working within the spirit of  that principle so that you make sure that the appeal  and the posing is correct for the frame and the camera. That is all that matters for that, uh, animation  and the framing of that animation.

Finally, we end at the last of the 12  nine Old Men principles of animation. And that principle is appeal. It's basically what all  of the other principles are aiming towards. And appeal is one of the most intangible qualities of all  of the principles because it's a bit subjective. It's basically comes down to what do people like to see. Another way to think of it is adding a charming quality  to your animation.

A misinterpretation of appeal might be something like  assuming or, or thinking that the character design  of your animation has to always be a handsome character,  that a grotesque character can never have appeal. And that's just not the case. It's all about what people like or want to see  or are, are kind of captured by and want to see more of. And so that can include grotesque, you know, scary monsters  as much as it can include cute fluffy bunnies. Appeal isn't limited to those types of distinctions,  so don't think of it in those terms of traditional,  um, you know, qualities like that appeal  can be charming in this sense in very simple sense. How often times have you seen  a motion graphics animation on a social media platform  of some kind where it's like a looping animation  and it's just a very simple animation,  but just that simplicity and the appealing motion.

Maybe it's something, you know, interesting happening,  like something getting sliced in half over and over  or who knows what it is. But there's plenty of examples online  that people are enraptured by just  because of that simple appealing quality. Now, you know, the color, the, all  of the principles we've talked about up to this point  play into that and help create that appeal. So something to keep in mind is, you know, something  that has appeal cannot lack in clarity. It must be clear and to the audience for it  to have an app appealing characteristic, right? Something can't be unclear and also be appealing, right?

That just doesn't make sense. So if we start down the path of trying at at least first  to be clear, because that is a requirement, um, of, uh,  of appealing animation, that clarity will help get us closer  and closer to that appealing quality  that we're striving for. And appeal isn't always about adding  something to your animation. You know, when you look back at all, all  of these principles, it's not like if you went  through each one and checked off the box  and you did each one of these principles that voila,  you'd have an appealing animation. That's not really how it works. And so it could be about taking away stuff, so you know,  reducing the amount of principles you put in, you know,  adding that charm  and quality could be adding something unexpected  to the animation that we didn't cover here,  or breaking one of the rules  because there are those expectations.

So don't just think by adding more stuff  or more animation that you'll get closer  to appealing animation. It could be the fact that you might need  to take elements away from your animation  to make them more appealing and clear. So appeal in animation  and as a principle all depend on the circumstance  of your animation and what you're animating  and those elements  and how they're arranged,  how they're moved, how they're designed. All of these things go in  to creating an appealing animation. Now, one of the biggest aspects to  evaluate whether it's appealing is to get feedback. And that's one of the most precious things, uh,  about animating, is  because we're trying to connect  with an audience on some level.

We are making it to be seen by someone,  and hopefully it's seen in the way  that we intended it to be seen. So getting that feedback, especially at an early stage,  to see if something is working can be very helpful  and save you a ton of time. Maybe so you're not going down a road  that someone thinks isn't working, it's too distracting,  they aren't looking where you want them to look. Um, something happens too fast, it's too slow,  they're bored, and you don't need  to just ask other animators. Everyone you know, is a consumer of animation  and has been watching things long enough  to know what they like to see. So when you're thinking about appeal,  also consider getting feedback from several different people  to get eyes on it, because the closer you get  and the more time you spend with your animation,  the harder it is to take further  and further steps back to see  what it actually looks like sometimes.

And so that's a very valuable process in animation,  is seeking out feedback. So let's review. In this lesson we discussed four  of the last principles of animation. All four of these are about creating clarity in our  animation, whereas everything  before this, except for the pose to pose  and straight ahead principle, were about physics. So in this we discussed staging, exaggeration,  solid drawing, or solid posing and appeal,  and how all four of those things can help us drive towards  creating appealing motion in our animations. Now, and the assignment for this lesson is going to be  creating the bouncing ball effect.

We've kind of been talking around it this entire time  and we've used many examples of it,  and it's a bit of a rite of passage  to animate a bouncing ball and not just a rite of passage,  but it's something you're gonna revisit quite often. One of the first movies I worked on, I,  I worked on Transformers the last night,  and in that movie there's a scene where knights are getting  bombarded with catapults of these big fireballs. And you know, I'm super excited  and proud to be working on my first, you know,  big visual effects movie. And the first thing I get handed is basically  the bouncing ball. I animate the mortar balls from the catapults  flying in, hitting the ground. Some of them break, some of them roll over Digi digi doubles  that I also animated in the scene.

Some of it in slow motion. So I really needed to know the principles  and the fundamentals of the bouncing ball animation. So it's not something you're ever gonna escape. The bouncing ball really is involved in a lot  of the animations I've done throughout my career  in some form or another. The root motion of a character bouncing through a frame. All of these things, you know, can kind of go back to trying  to get a mastery of the balancing ball.

So never be averse to trying, uh,  the balancing ball animation, revisiting it,  doing a different take on it, trying to be creative with it. It's one of the fundamental practices that, uh,  you should be excited about  and we're gonna do in the next, uh, demonstration  and mini project together. So let's do that. And we're also gonna cover some claymation with that. So we are going to cover a new version  of stop motion animation by using Clay. So thanks for watching and I'll see you there.