Animation has it's own core principles which can help you to make your animation much more clean to look at.
Arcs:
Much like the arcs in 3D modelling, animation uses arcs to make clean transitions from place to place, making the flow of animation look a lot more natural.
Secondary Movement:
Secondary movement adds more dimension to the main action within an animation. An example of this is strong arm movements correspoding with an aggressive walk.
Anticipation:
Anticipation is the lead up to make the viewers expect something to happen. Examples include the raise of a fist before punching or the deep breath of a character before screaming.
Exaggeration:
Exaggeration is the movement of an object in an exaggerated manner in order to generate dramatic effect.
Appeal:
Appeal is correcting the animation to make it fit the character, more or less perceiving the character's soul within their movement.
Solid Drawing:
Solid Drawing is creating the illusion of the 3rd dimension along with an objects form and weight among other things.
Timing:
Getting timing correct requires numerous trial and error attempts. Adding drawings closer between frames to create slower and more detailed movement along with adding drawing further away from frames for faster and more crisp movement creates texture within an animation. Experiment with the timing of this to create lifelike animation.
Follow Through & Overlapping Action:
This is when a character moves and other parts move to catch up with it's main mass. Clothes and hair are examples of what should coincide with this pirnciple.
Slow In & Slow Out:
Adding more drawings to the beggining and end and adding few in the middle helps to emphasise lifelikeness to a scene, it also works with gags and allows forn shock appeal.
Straight Ahead & Pose To Pose:
This type of animation works from the first drawing, continuing drawing by drawing until reaching the end of a scene, works well with fast and wild scenes.
Staging:
Staging is reflecting the mood of a character through their actions, helping pertray the plot.
Squash & Stretch:
Squash & Stretch gives the illusion of both weight and volume to a moving object. Places where this becomes useful is in facial expressions. This is the most important principle.
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