Forum 2: The 12 Principles and How Skyrim Incorporates Them

 

    According to Jonathan Cooper, there are twelve different principles of animation. These include Squash & Stretch, Staging, Anticipation, Straight ahead & pose to pose, Follow-through and overlapping action, slow in & slow out, arcs, secondary action, appeal, timing, exaggeration, and solid drawing. Over the past weekend I replayed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and several aspects stood out to me: squash and stretch, staging, anticipation, slow in & slow out, and secondary action.

    To begin with, Squash and Stretch is “the technique of squashing or stretching elements of a character or object (such as a bouncing ball) to exaggerate movement in the related direction” (Cooper 28) After playing as the same character for years, I have noticed that there are specific points in which the Dragonborn’s body parts move. However, I would not say that the game employs this rule. Skyrim’s entire graphic style uses realism to create a fictitious yet convincing medieval world and as such, there is not much room for exaggeration. This principle seems to be more relevant to cartoonishly-animated games like Mario, Zelda, and Sonic than “realistic” games like Skyrim.

    Staging, however, is relevant to Skyrim. Cooper defines staging as the principle of “presenting any idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear. This involves the use of camera, lighting, or character composition to focus the viewer’s attention to what is relevant to that scene while avoiding unnecessary detail and confusion” (Cooper 29). Skyrim uses staging in all sorts of subtle ways, whether it is to highlight quest items, clarify where the enemies are, or show important story elements. For example, the game uses rounded, glowing walls to tell the player that he or she is about to learn a new word of power. It could also be used to distract from certain quests and use darkness and optical illusions to make objectives harder to find. Staging is probably the most behind-the-scenes out of all these elements.

    Anticipation, according to the textbook, “is used to prepare the viewer for an action, such as a crouch before a jump or an arm pulling back for a punch. It occurs in the natural world because a person jumping must first crouch with bended knees to give enough energy to life off the ground, so it is used similarly in animation to sell the energy transfer of an action in a way the action alone cannot” (Cooper 30). Skyrim does this in multiple ways. For example, if the player draws a weapon or starts to attack someone, the game shows the weapon being drawn or moved to let the player know. In addition, NPCs like bandits or dragons can show the player that he or she is trespassing by drawing their weapons. Essentially, games like Skyrim use anticipation to warn players that their actions may have consequences.

    Next, slow in & slow out are described as “the visual result of acceleration and deceleration on moving elements whereby actions generally have slower movements at the start and end as the action begins and is completed, often due to the weight of the object or character body part” (Cooper 33). After rereading this I immediately thought of the game’s combat mechanics and remembered that the Dragonborn’s movements are slower when he is about to attack than when he finishes the attack. The animators of the game give one moment to anticipate the attack and even less once the attack is in motion. After the player attacks, the game takes time to register the command used to give the NPCs a realistic reaction to the player’s action.

    The last of these principles is solid drawings. Jonathan Cooper states the following: “While no longer done on a page, an understanding of volume and three dimensions is still essential for an animator when animating a character in 3D to aid with posing and knowing the limits and workings of body mechanics” showing that while drawing is not done the way it used to be, its concepts are still used in the animation industry and it is more complicated than just designing (Cooper 40). By creating solid drawings, there is a clear sense of reality to the characters. The more detailed these drawings are, the more depth, weight and height perception can be added to the characters in Skyrim. With solid drawings also emphasizing body mechanics, there is extra immersion in the game because of the life-like physics. While there are some character animations that enter uncanny valley territory, the game’s character animations such as running, jumping, walking, and fighting look rather natural because the animators used solid drawing techniques.

 

Works Cited

Cooper, Jonathan. Game Anim: Video Game Animation Explained. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.