Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation

For me, character animation doesn’t mean making an object look like a character or give it hands and a face. It is giving life to an object, make it look as if it was thinking and all of its movements are generated by its own thought process. It is the change of shape, facial expressions and body language that show that a character is thinking. It is giving the object a mind of its own to enable it to think, and thus create the illusion of life that comes from the ability to dictate your own movements and express emotions.  As Saint-Exupery once wrote, “It’s not the eyes, but the glance - not the lips, but the smile...”

“The eyes more than anything else give life to a toy” said Lasseter. “The angle of a blink, how far the pupils go off to the side when a character is trying to peek at something without being noticed, conveys a sense of presence better than any other element”. 

I realized that the ability to think and thus act accordingly gives life to objects. I was unaware that that was what I did in my projects to give life to the characters I created.


For example, in my last short-animation, even though the main characters were nothing but simple spheres, the audience would have the feel that the spheres are actually human. Even though they had no face, hands or feet, one could absolutely feel it when they are happy, sad, angry, etc. This was possible because the spheres were animated based on the principles of traditional animation.