Introduction
All animation principles and techniques portrayed in this book will help you create appealing and fluid movements for your characters. But movements alone are useless: they need a reason to exist; they ought to have meaning. From subtleties such as blinking eyes, to full body motion and lip sync, everything must have a purpose.
The animator must know the character and understand the motivations behind each action. You need to ask yourself some questions before you start drawing or moving controls on screen. There is a useful and widely used acting technique known as W.O.F.A.I.M. that helps us answer the main questions. It stands for:
Wants: Ask yourself what your character wants and, and more importantly, why does it want it?
Objectives: When your character wants something, it's probably with an objective in mind. This can be an immediate one, such as throwing a baseball, or a long term objective (our character may be throwing that baseball in training for the final game).
Feelings...
