Agent skill · creative production · dylantarre
Animation Principles - Teaching Others
Use when someone needs to explain animation principles to students, mentees, or team members at various skill levels
Why this skill is useful
Codifies effective teaching strategies for animation principles that the AI could infer but now doesn't have to guess.
What it needs
About 2k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2025-12-30. 69 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Teaching the 12 Principles Effectively Teaching animation principles requires meeting students where they are. Here's how to communicate each principle at different levels. Teaching Strategies by Principle 1. Squash and Stretch Show first: Bouncing ball exercise - universal, immediate, undeniable. Common confusion: Students preserve shape instead of volume. Use clay demonstration. Key phrase: "Volume stays the same, shape changes." 2. Anticipation Show first: Video of real athletes - every jump has a crouch. Common confusion: Making anticipation too large or too long. Key phrase: "The audience needs a heads-up." 3. Staging Show first: Silhouette test. If they can't read it as a shadow, it fails. Common confusion: Cluttering with detail before establishing clarity. Key phrase: "What's the ONE thing this frame says?" 4. Straight Ahead / Pose to Pose Show first: Same action animated both ways - compare results. Common confusion: Thinking one method is "correct." Key phrase: "Pose to pose for control, straight ahead for discovery." 5. Follow Through / Overlapping Show first: Slow-motion hair, fabric, tails. Nature demonstrates constantly. Common confusion: Everything stopping at the same frame. Key phrase: "Nothing stops at once. What's attached keeps going." 6. Slow In / Slow Out Show first: Push a heavy box versus a light one. Spacing changes. Common confusion: Even spacing (tweening syndrome). Key phrase: "More drawings where it slows, fewer where it's fast." 7. Arcs Show first: Trace hand during natural gesture - it curves. Common confusion: Mechanical point-to-point movement. Key phrase: "Almost everything curves. Straight lines are exceptions." 8. Secondary Action Show first: Walking while talking on phone - multiple layers. Common confusion: Secondary action competing with primary. Key phrase: "It adds flavor but shouldn't steal the show." 9. Timing Show first: Same action at 4, 8, 12, 24 frames - feel the difference. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills dylantarre/teaching-others