Anticipation is one of the fundamental 12 basic principles of animation, as set out by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in their authoritative 1981 book on the Disney Studio titled The Illusion of Life. An anticipation pose or drawing is a preparation for the main action of an animated scene, as distinct from the action and the reaction.
"Early on at the Disney Studio the animators learned that audiences" could not easily follow the animation unless there was a "planned series of events" leading the eye. [1] Therefore, in order to prepare the audience for an action, the animators would add a so-called anticipation drawing, allowing the audience to anticipate the main action in the scene. [1] This would also help to make the action appear more realistic. [2]
For example, a man preparing to run fast would crouch down, "gathering like a spring" for the main action. This is called the anticipation for the main action. Equally, a golfer making a swing has to anticipate the swing by swinging the club back first, just as a baseball pitcher must "wind up" before throwing the ball. [3] This technique was borrowed from the theatre, and was important in holding the audience's attention. [1] The audience might not know exactly why a character was doing something, but they would at least know what he was doing (or what he was about to do). [1]
The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up. [4]
At the Disney studio, Walt Disney pushed his animators to improve their work, and he was especially insistent that visual gags should be clear, wishing to make sure that the audience could always see everything clearly so they could anticipate what was going to happen. He called this technique "aiming", and would act out actions himself, exaggerating them so that the animators could clearly capture the effect. [5]
Les Clark, one of Disney's most talented animators, and later one of Disney's Nine Old Men later said of this discovery: "Today it may look simple to us; at the time it wasn't. It was something that hadn't been tried before or proved". [5]
By contrast, the anticipation pose can also be omitted in cases where it might be expected. The resulting sense of anticlimax will produce a feeling of surprise in the viewer, and can often add comedy to a scene. [6] This is often referred to as a 'surprise gag'. [7]
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Franklin Rosborough Thomas was an American animator and pianist. He was one of Walt Disney's leading team of animators known as the Nine Old Men.
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Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life is a book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of the key animators at Disney during the Golden age of American animation.
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Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was an American motion picture animator. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last surviving at the time of his death from natural causes. He was recognized by The Walt Disney Company with its Disney Legend Award in 1989. His work was recognized with the National Medal of Arts in 2005.
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William Norman Ferguson was an animator for Walt Disney Studios and a central contributor to the studio's stylistic development in the 1930s. He is most frequently noted for his contribution to the creation of Pluto, one of the studio's best-known and most enduring characters, and is the artist most closely associated with that character. He is also credited for developing Peg-Leg Pete and the Big Bad Wolf. Ferguson, known at the studio as "Norm" or "Fergy", was the primary animator of the witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first in a long line of great Disney feature villains. He was also a sequence director on the film.
Disney's twelve basic principles of animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. The principles are based on the work of Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, in their quest to produce more realistic animation. The main purpose of these principles was to produce an illusion that cartoon characters adhered to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.
Disney's Nine Old Men were a group of Walt Disney Productions' core animators, who worked at the studio from the 1920s to the 1980s. Some of the Nine Old Men also worked as directors, creating some of Disney's most popular animated movies from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Rescuers. The group was named by Walt Disney himself, and they worked in both short and feature films. Disney delegated more and more tasks to them in the animation department in the 1950s when their interests expanded, and diversified their scope. Eric Larson was the last to retire from Disney, after his role as animation consultant on The Great Mouse Detective in 1986. All nine members of the group were acknowledged as Disney Legends in 1989 and all would receive the Winsor McCay Award for their lifetime or career contributions to the art of animation.
Follow through and overlapping action is a general heading for two closely related animation techniques which form part of the 12 basic principles of animation identified by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in their authoritative 1981 book on Disney animation, The Illusion of Life. The term drag is sometimes included to form three separate but related concepts in the art of animation.
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