The 12 principles of animation provide a checklist of techniques that make procedural characters feel alive

Disney animators compiled 12 principles: squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, straight-ahead/pose-to-pose, follow-through/overlapping action, slow-in/slow-out, arcs, secondary action, timing, exaggeration, solid drawing, appeal. For procedural shader characters, the most directly applicable are: squash-and-stretch (ellipsoid scale with SDF), follow-through (ear/arm lag via time offsets), slow-in/slow-out (non-linear parametric curves on motion), and secondary action (trampoline floor reacting to landing). Consulting this list is a shortcut to diagnosing what makes a procedural animation feel robotic.

Examples

IQ applies squash-stretch (ellipsoid scaling), follow-through (ear offsets), slow-in/slow-out (power curves on fract(time)), and secondary action (animated floor deformation) all to the Happy Jumping creature.

Assessment

List three of the 12 principles and describe one GLSL technique that implements each, without repeating examples from the explanation.