12 Principles of Animation

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

Additional Reading

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation

" two of Disney's Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. It is widely considered to be one of the best books ever published on the topic of character animation. It tops the list of "best animation books of all time" in a poll at AWN [1]. "