Have you heard about Disney’s 12 principles of animation? They were written about by animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in the books The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, first published in 1982. Johnston and Thomas cut the studio’s approach down to 12 basic principles of animation by thoroughly examining the artwork of leading Disney animators from the 1930s onwards.

-The 12 Principels of Animation
►Stretch and Squash

○The squash and stretch principle is considered the most important of the 12 principles of animation. When applied, it gives your animated characters and objects the illusion of gravity, weight, mass and flexibility. Think about how a bouncing rubber ball may react when tossed into the air: the ball stretches when it travels up and down and squishes when it hits the ground.

○When using squash and stretch, it’s important to keep the object’s volume consistent. So when you stretch something it needs to get thinner, and when you squash something it needs to get wider.