The 12 Principles of Animation - Episode 10

Hello there!

Welcome.

To learn about...

The Tenth Principle - Exaggeration

My second ever animation from 2017 exaggerated the happy face with the rising pigtails (and inconsistent proportions). Can't believe I'm still stuck in an abusive relationship with this show, and at this point I'm not sure which one is the abuser...

The principle of exaggeration is basically what animation as a whole is: exaggeration. It's about dramatizing an action to emphasize it or make it fun to watch - which I find to be the exact best part about animation, being limited only by the constraints of one's imagination and mind. 

Because exaggeration is so essential to animation, there are so many things that can be exaggerated, most common ones being poses, weight, impact and the faces your characters make. In fact, facial expressions are easily the most important element to exaggerate, because 90% of the time your audience watches the eyes on the faces of your characters (unless of course you make... special animations) . What's more, exaggeration can be applied to all other principles as well - extravagant arcs, extreme squash and stretch, lingering on exaggerated frames for longer etc.

The impact of exaggeration is so huge that it:

1- sets tone: depending on what you are exaggerating and why, exaggeration can work as a great way to set the tone of the scene. For example exaggerated poses or expressions are an easy way to add a comedic touch to your animation. 

2- is what makes animation special: although animation most of the time strives for reality and believability, exaggeration or the ability to really hammer a point home is what makes animation special. Exaggerated points of impact, explosions, poses etc. make animation dynamic, clear, interesting and entertaining to watch. 

3- emphasizes personality and character: with exaggerated poses and expressions naturally comes personality.   

4- directs viewers' attention to what's significant: exaggeration is also a good way to minimize unimportant details and highlight what's really important. For instance, if you want to convince your audience your character is physically strong, you better buff that boy up! Your happy character shouldn't just smile, their grin should look like their eyebrows are about to detach and fly to space.  

Challenges:

Here are two challenges I could find with the help of my source/study videos. Hopefully they don't exaggerate the challenges too much to make them appear too challenging:

Exaggerating too much

- Although exaggeration can be fun, sometimes too much is simply too much - especially if the audience's suspension of disbelief is at risk. Too much exaggeration can clash with pre-established tones or distort the character's proportions. Soon you'll find your audience asking questions like which one of your characters is taller, when did this one shrink/grow, what do they eat and where can I get some of that? We don't want to distort the character, that's not what exaggeration means, but instead we want to convince the audience of what they see as clearly as possible.  

- Thus, it's important to stay proportionally accurate to your character's model or to stay on model so as to not break audience's immersion. When animating, it might be easier to exaggerate more on the first rough stages of the work, so that it's easier to dial it back and find the right amount of exaggeration later.   

Remember to exaggerate within the character's limit

- One of the things exaggeration does best is add character, which is why the character itself should be taken into account when thinking up what to exaggerate. Due to the wide spectrum of personalities, exaggeration for characters shows up in different ways. The most angry face two characters could make shouldn't - in my opinion - look the exact same. 

-  This piece of advice doesn't just apply to character-characters. The world your characters habit is also a character of its own with its own traits, aesthetics etc. And because exaggeration also affects aspects like tone and vibe, sometimes it might be best not to exaggerate at all - at least too much over realistic standards. You would likely be confused if a dead body suddenly bounced off the floor like a bouncy ball in a gritty show like The Walking Dead.   

This example by Alan Becker sells the impact of exaggeration very well: while the left one is more realistic, animation has the ability to exaggerate things to make them more interesting and impactful... and so the hit on the right looks like it really hurt 

Practise exercises:

- Take an old animation and exaggerate it: almost all animations can be exaggerated even further to better drive home the point

- Falcon punch!: here especially the pose is exaggeration heavy, but there's a bunch of other things that could be exaggerated such as the impact, the wind-up or anticipation, the aftermath of the punch and so on

- Exaggerated facial expressions: whatever expression you might choose, you could start out with a very default or neutral version of it and have it gradually become more exaggerated

I hope you enjoyed reading or even skimming through my blog. Feel absolutely free to comment more ideas or even share your own animations! I'd love to hear and see some of what you can come up with for practising this principle! And with that...

Thank you for reading and see you next post!