The following 12 principles of animation were introduced by the 'old men' of Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s and later printed in their book called, "The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation" in 1981.

So, the 12 principles are as follows:

• Squash and stretch
• Anticipation
• Staging
• Straight ahead and pose-to-pose
• Follow through and overlapping action
• Slow-in and slow-out
• Arcs
• Secondary action
• Timing
• Exaggeration
• Solid drawing
• Appeal

Here's a little clip that I came across while looking at some materials online. Italian illustrator, <Cento Lodigiani>, created this clip to help people further understand the topic of the 12 principles of animation by applying it to a very simple subject a.k.a., a cube.





In my personal opinion, almost all of the principles that have been listed out above give a certain breath of life towards animation. I definitely disagree on having 'appeal' as part of the list as different strokes for different folks. Having the idea of making sure everything is aesthetically appealing is somehow narrow-minded as most media nowadays be it animation, music videos or even paintings in general, rely on strange or even grotesque art forms to portray a certain setting or mood.

One of which would be the Czech surrealist filmmaker and artist, Jan Švankmajer, who directed an animated short film called "Dimensions of Dialogue (Možnosti Dialogu)", which is split into three parts:

1) Eternal conversation (Dialog věcný):
- Arcimboldo-like heads reducing themselves from large complicated objects into finely-chopped copies of themselves.

2) Passionate discourse (Dialog vášnivý):
- A clay man and clay woman dissolving into one another sexually, then quarrel then reducing themselves into some sort of clay mess.

3) Exhaustive discussion (Dialog vyčerpávající):
- Two elderly playheads extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste, shoes and shoelaces, pencil and sharpener etc..) and mixes them in various... odd combinations.




To wrap things up, I would say that new mediums have arisen since the era of when "The 12 Principles of Animation" was introduced. Alongside with new mediums, new rules are formed. Also, with us living in the 21st century, rules are made to be broken– hence, animated films are continuing to push boundaries into new territory (which, if I might add, is awesome).

Have a nice day!