Follow through and overlapping action is a general heading for two closely related
animation
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
techniques which form part of the
12 basic principles of animation
Disney's twelve basic principles of animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas (animator), Frank Thomas in their 1981 book ''The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation''. The principles are based on the work of ...
identified by
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
animators
Frank Thomas and
Ollie Johnston
Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. (October 31, 1912 – April 14, 2008) was an American motion picture animator. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last surviving at the time of his death from natural causes. He was recognized by The Wal ...
in their authoritative 1981 book on Disney animation, ''
The Illusion of Life
''Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life'' (later republished as ''The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation'') is a book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of the key animators at Disney during the Golden age of American animation.
Conten ...
''. The term ''drag'' is sometimes included to form three separate but related concepts in the art of animation.
Definition
Follow through and overlapping action are closely related techniques which, when applied to animation, can help to render movement more realistically by more closely obeying the
laws of physics. At the Disney Studio, Walt Disney was eager to push his animators to improve their work and develop their skills. He told them:
:"Things don't come to a stop all at once guys; first there's one part and then another"
[Thomas and Johnston, p.59]
The animators, keen to make their work feel more convincing, developed the concepts of "Follow Through" and "Overlapping Action", though the concepts were so closely related that they were not always easy to distinguish.
Thomas and Johnston identified five areas of motion where these principles would apply:
1. A character might have a coat or long ears, and these parts would keep moving once the figure had stopped moving. The ears, or coat, would "follow through" even after the main action had stopped.
2. Bodies in motion do not move all at once, rather different parts of a body may move at different speeds. Therefore, as one part of the body stops, another part (such as an arm), might overlap or follow through the main action, slowly settling to a stop.
3. Loose flesh, such as a dog's floppy jowls, might move at a slower speed than the more solid parts of the character. These parts might drag behind the main action.
[Thomas and Johnston, p.60]
4. The completion of an action - how the action "follows through" - is often more important than the action itself.
5. The "moving hold". A character might come to a complete halt, but the fleshy parts might follow through the main action in order to convey weight and believability.
See also
*
Squash and stretch
Bibliography
*
* Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank, ''The Illusion of Life'', Abbeville Press, New York (1981)
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Notes
{{reflist, 2
Animation techniques
Animation terminology