The Principles of Animation Applied in “Carnival Kiss”
Carnival Kiss is a short for the popular character, Pucca, under the South Korean company, Vooz (with Studio B), animated by Claudia Kelly. Like many other animatic cinema, this short film demonstrates many of the principles of animation, but we will focus on three: follow through and overlapping action, anticipation, and squash and stretch.
First and foremost, there are several instances in which follow through and overlapping action techniques are used — take this short, quick motion for example. It perfectly demonstrates how the furthermost left character’s appendages (here, his hair and his mask) drag behind the rest of the body and continues to move.
Here, the character perfectly portrays the principle of anticipation. Anticipation is defined as character prepares for an action to give the audience a clue as to what is happening next, as well as to make the action more realistic and believable. It is an exaggeration of a gesture foreshadowing the main event, in which, for this example, would be the action of ripping his shirt off.
Finally, Carnival Kiss portrays both arcs and squash and stretch, but to portray the most clearest principle, we will focus on squash and stretch specifically. You can see multiple instances of squash and stretch — for example, the farthest right character is stretching as he is thrown onto the pile of other characters, who are drawn with a squash. The pile of characters are squashed (horizontally, with gravity pushing the bodies down), while the character, being thrown, follows the stretch of the arc, like a bouncing ball.
