Staging

This principle is akin to staging as it is known in theatre and film.^[11] Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene; what is happening, and what is about to happen.^[12] Johnston and Thomas defined it as "the presentation of any idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear", whether that idea is an action, a personality, an expression or a mood.^[11] This can be done by various means, such as the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, and the angle and position of the camera.^[13] The essence of this principle is keeping focus on what is relevant, and avoiding unnecessary detail

Anticipation

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic.^[7] A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend his knees first; a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up.^[8]

Anticipation: A baseball player making a pitch prepares for the action by moving his arm back.

For special effect, anticipation can also be omitted in cases where it is expected. The resulting sense of anticlimax will produce a feeling of surprise in the viewer, and can often add comedy to a scene.^[9] This is often referred to as a 'surprise gag'

Squash and stretch

The most important principle is "squash and stretch",^[2] the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the musculature of a human face.^[3][4] Taken to an extreme point, a figure stretched or squashed to an exaggerated degree can have a comical effect.^[5] In realistic animation, however, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object's volume does not change when squashed or stretched. If the length of a ball is stretched vertically, its width (in three dimensions, also its depth) needs to contract correspondingly horizontally

12 basic principles of animation

The Twelve Basic Principles of Animation is a set of principles of animation introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.^[a][1] Johnston and Thomas in turn based their book on the work of the leading Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, and their effort to produce more realistic animations. The main purpose of the principles was to produce an illusion of characters adhering to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.
The book and its principles have become generally adopted, and have been referred to as the "Bible of the industry."^{[by whom?]} In 1999 the book was voted number one of the "best animation books of all time" in an online poll. Though originally intended to apply to traditional, hand-drawn animation, the principles still have great relevance for today's more prevalent computer animation

Non-traditional systems

An alternative approach was developed where the actor is given an unlimited walking area through the use of a rotating sphere, similar to a hamster ball, which contains internal sensors recording the angular movements, removing the need for external cameras and other equipment. Even though this technology could potentially lead to much lower costs for mocap, the basic sphere is only capable of recording a single continuous direction. Additional sensors worn on the person would be needed to record anything more.
Another alternative is using a 6DOF (Degrees of freedom) motion platform with an integrated omni-directional treadmill with high resolution optical motion capture to achieve the same effect. The captured person can walk in an unlimited area, negotiating different uneven terrains. Applications include medical rehabilitation for balance training, biomechanical research and virtual reality.

RF positioning

RF (radio frequency) positioning systems are becoming more viable as higher frequency RF devices allow greater precision than older RF technologies. The speed of light is 30 centimeters per nanosecond (billionth of a second), so a 10 gigahertz (billion cycles per second) RF signal enables an accuracy of about 3 centimeters. By measuring amplitude to a quarter wavelength, it is possible to improve the resolution down to about 8 mm. To achieve the resolution of optical systems, frequencies of 50 gigahertz or higher are needed, which are almost as line of sight and as easy to block as optical systems. Multipath and reradiation of the signal are likely to cause additional problems, but these technologies will be ideal for tracking larger volumes with reasonable accuracy, since the required resolution at 100 meter distances is not likely to be as high

Facial motion capture

Most traditional motion capture hardware vendors provide for some type of low resolution facial capture utilizing anywhere from 32 to 300 markers with either an active or passive marker system. All of these solutions are limited by the time it takes to apply the markers, calibrate the positions and process the data. Ultimately the technology also limits their resolution and raw output quality levels.
High fidelity facial motion capture, also known as performance capture, is the next generation of fidelity and is utilized to record the more complex movements in a human face in order to capture higher degrees of emotion. Facial capture is currently arranging itself in several distinct camps, including traditional Vicon based motion capture data, blend shaped based solutions, capturing the actual topology of an actor's face, and proprietary systems.