The 12 Principles of Animation - Episode 12

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The Twelfth Principle - Appeal

Timing's off with this one, but at least it's more appealing than what I was going to have here. No - even if appeal is subjective - I'm not showing it

The principle of appeal - the final principle of the twelve - is about captivating audiences with simple, clear and compelling animation that is pleasing to look at.

Appeal is an all-encompassing concept that can be applied to every aspect of a shot, such as the composition, lighting, character design - especially character design as we like to look at interesting and aesthetically pleasing things and characters!

But it's worth noting that appeal doesn't necessarily mean easy on the eyes or conventionally attractive, rather that something is interesting to look at - which makes appeal the most subjective of the principles. The concept of appeal affects:

1- character design: clear designs with simple shapes and little detail tend to have more appeal due to them being easier for our eyes to look at and digest. What's more, variety in shapes, palettes and proportions or contrast also improves appeal of casts of characters. 

2- personality and writing: villains or intentionally outwardly-ugly characters might not be pretty, but they still have appeal. Their designs should be on the interesting side but their writing (just like every major character's writing) should evoke an emotional connection from the viewer - whether it be positive or negative. Personality and writing can be made appealing not only with the dialogue but with the way a character is animated as well or how they express their personality and thoughts.

3- aesthetics: this could be the visual look or setting of a story or animation, how realistic the style is and other elements like dark imagery or grotesque elements. These all add appeal in their own way to make animation interesting. 

4- contrast and exaggeration: as well as exaggeration of proportion, emotion and personality are super important aspects that make animation appealing and stand out from other mediums. 

Challenges:

Because appeal is the more subjective than it is objective, these challenges are more like considerations to look at before starting on your animations:

Realism vs. engagement

- This is very similar to one of the challenges with exaggeration: should your animation stick closer to real life or would exaggerating help reinforce the message of the animation in a more appealing and clear way? 

- This is typically decided by things like the context, mood, tone and character of your animation. But ultimately it comes down to you and what you prefer.   

Keep it simple

- To best and most effectively illustrate your point (literally, heh) to your audience, it's recommended to focus on one or two important elements on whatever it is you're animating. Animation is about emphasizing certain elements to increase clarity, so too much visual clutter is only going to confuse your audience. And overwork yourself. 

- This piece of advise is also a reminder not to get bogged down in unnecessary secondary actions, extra details of a character design and other irrelevant elements in a shot. Especially in 2D-animation you must pick and choose what elements to keep to best increase clarity of the action and to make it easy for the audience to pick up on the essential parts of the shot.   

My second bouncing ball made in 2020

Practise exercises:

- Nothing really: I mean it. I've got no exercises for you. Just design a few appealing characters that contrast with each other and get to animating. Go wild!

I hope you enjoyed reading or even skimming through one post of my blog. Hopefully I was able to teach you something new, I surely learned a lot... well basically everything on here. With that...

Thank you for reading and see you on the finale coverage of my final task!