Channel Frederator Blog

In an effort to cover some educational topics, I thought it might be worthwhile to go over the 12 basic principles of animation here on the blog. The first of these is the idea of Squash & Stretch.

This does not mean to mush things around just for the sake of squishing things! Squash and stretch has to do with the idea of having a preservation of mass. If an object is a certain size, and gravity or some other force acts upon it, that mass has to be maintained. For example, if the object gets squeezed down from above, the sides will bulge out a bit,  allowing the mass someplace to go.

You can see this idea in action in the real world as well.

The cat is lying on the bed prior to running. As the cat leaps off of the bed, he extends his body, stretching out. WHAM! When he hits the wall, he squashes out on the sides, since the wall doesn’t budge. This is not limited to one form, either. A pose can be squashed or stretched out to give a nice, fluid result.

These Preston Blair GIFs do a great job of illustrating the principle of Squash & Stretch.  Keep watching the blog for more examples of the principles of animation.

-Floyd Bishop