The 12 Principles of Animation - Episode 8

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The Eighth Principle - Secondary Action

Blue chads walk in a confident manner while swinging their hands in 2022

The eighth principle of the 12 principles of animation concerns secondary action. These can be any additional actions that enhance the main action in some way, for example gesturing with hands while talking or swinging your hands back and forth while walking.    

Not to be confused with the principle of follow through and overlap, secondary action is actually more about storytelling than animation. Whereas follow through and overlap are secondary animation, the principle of secondary action is like adding a subplot to your animation that:

1- reinforces main action or gives it more meaning: although secondary action isn't essential or required, it does have a positive effect on the main action - that being adding extra meaning or emphasizing main action more. Let's say we have a character whose main action is to slam their fists on a table. Let's also have the character grit their teeth and frown. Now with the additional context of the secondary action, we interpret that the character must be angry. This is the simple yet powerful way of the secondary.

2- adds personality: through secondary action, you can express any possible quirks of your characters to more effectively flesh out their personalities. Little actions and habits like hand gestures while talking, twitching eyes, playing with their hair, fidgeting hands, tapping feet etc. go a long way for characterization through animation as well as make the animation more interesting to watch.  

3- reinforces realism: people hardly ever sit completely still while talking, which is why secondary action also makes your animations more believable and realistic.   

Challenges:

If you're not too keen on storytelling but would rather animate, this principle can cause some challenges not only for you, but enthusiastic storytellers as well:

Keeping the action small

- As someone who loves the extra characterization that secondary action can convey, it can be possible to get lost in coming up with lots of fun quirks and actions that I forget that secondary action is just that: non-essential additional actions that add character.  

- Make sure the action is small enough that it doesn't distract from the primary action. It's supposed to be like background music that doesn't divide that attention of the audience, but instead helps focus on what's happening. One must also be careful not to let it go unnoticed: sometimes secondary action can be used to foreshadow something bigger about a character's backstory or personality.  

Choosing secondary action that complements the main action

- When thinking up and choosing secondary action for the animation, you should take into account the character's attitude, personality and demeanour. To put it in dialogue writing terms, main action is the dialogue that moves the story forward while secondary action is the dialogue that reveals character - which is why it's important that it fits the character or the audience becomes confused. 

-  Another thing to take into account is the context that secondary action adds. Facial expressions are extremely important not only as secondary action but sometimes as main action as well, making them significant animator's storytelling tools. So if your character's main action is to jump backwards, a happy expression probably isn't the best fit if the character was just spooked by someone.    

In this secondary action animation by Alan Becker, knocking on the door is the main action. The secondary action, the held up fist, signals the character's mood and what it might do next

Practise exercises:

- Character talking: main action is the delivering of a line. What could your character do while talking? What could they do while saying this specific line? 

- Character sitting down: if the main action is the character sitting down, how could they sit down? Do they drop quickly or sit down carefully and adjust their sitting position? Could they cross their arms while sitting down or put them behind their head?  

- Character walking: main action is obviously walking, so everything else is secondary - including the swinging of hands. Maybe your character might bob their head, walk with long strides or swing their hands in exaggerated arcs? 

- Unexpected facial expressions: although I mentioned how bad ill-fitting expressions can be for the animation, you can flip the table on it and try inventive ways of making your animation (as well as your character) weirdly unique and fun. A character doing push-ups could instead have a bored expression instead of try-hard angie face. This is a funny and unexpected way of telling the audience how strong or careless or even sarcastic this character is.

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!