Animation Basics

Bringing your Animation to Life
Using keyframe animation, it is too easy to create dull, robotic animation. Linear paths make for lifeless animation.

Anticipation and Follow Through
Naturally, before an object with awareness moves forward, it anticipates the motion, by moving backwards slightly, first. After finishing the forward action, it doesn't completely come to a stop all of the sudden- it pulls back a little bit. This should be especially apparent if the action doesn't ease out.

Natural Movement
To create a more natural, and interesting animation, allow your object to pull back momentarily, before easing ahead.
This is the first step to creating natural looking animation. You can use this technique animating anything which moves, rotates, or scales.

Squash and Stretch
When an object squashes and stretches, it appears to be composed of a softer, organic, elastic material. Objects which do not stretch appear rigid and plain. Subtle exaggeration can grossly enhance an animation's illusion of realism, and make it more stimulating to watch. Overexagguration can make an animation look clearly unrealistic, and cartoon-like.
For most natural animation, good to keep exagguration quick and subtle.

Direction and Flow
Maintaining direction adds a sense of consistency throughout your Flash scenes.
Every object can enter the frame from the right, and exits to the left. This ensures that everything is generally going the same way, and it will not overwhelm or confuse the viewers eye.

Flowing into a collision
Direction can be used to illustrate opposite, or conflicting things.
Even though objects are not visible on the screen together until the final shot, the viewer knows that they are heading towards eachother, and can anticipate the collision.

Conflicting direction :: Staging
Staging is the communication of an action so that it is blatantly obvious to the viewer.
To experience the gross effect of an action, it is important to focus the viewer's attention to where the action occurs. This can be done by creating a strong contrast between the focus, and the rest of the scene. Attempt to lure the viewer's eye to the focal point before the main action even occurs. Bonus points, if you can do it without using obvious symbols such as arrows.
Contrast can be acheived with violent actions, varying speed, or opposing colors. A bright object will have focus in a dull scene, or slow moving text will stand out in a sea of objects constantly whipping by.

A properly staged object should be recognizable just by it's silloete. This applies to complex flash animations, as well as 3D scene layouts.

A good animation can lose it's gross effect if it is not staged clearly- the viewer should always know exactly what's happening, and have somewhere to focus on within the scene.