While the basic bow doesn't look bad, exactly, it could certainly look better.  The first thing that most people notice about it is that the bow looks very rigid.  The character moves all at once, and it moves with a perfectly linear spine.  This isn't natural, but it's not immediately obvious what to do in order to fix the situation.

What's needed is the application of two distinct principles of animation:  Slow-in-Slow-out, and Overlapping action. Both of these principle will be covered in this tutorial.

We'll start with the principle of Slow-in-Slow-out.  The idea behind this principle is very simple:  objects do not start moving instantly.  They accelerate.  Likewise, they do not stop moving instantly, but rather decelerate.

The simplest and most common movement in animation is for something to be at a dead-stop at Point A, move to Point B in a simple line or arc, and then stop at Point B. In these situations, the mechanics of acceleration and deceleration make for a very simple sequence of motions.  The object moves away from Point A slowly, reaches its peak of speed precisely halfway between Point A and Point B, and then slows down until it reaches Point B.

 
The importance of the slow-in-slow-out effect is impossible to overemphasize.  Because of how the human perceptual system is wired, a motion  that has good slow-in-slow-out is much more convincing than a motion without it.  Look at the animations below for a comparison. The ball on the right has slow-in and slow-out.  The ball on the left is a linear path.  Notice the jerk that is perceived at the left and right side on the left ball's motion?
 

So, knowing the importance of this principle you will obviously want to apply it to your bow.  Move on to the next page to see how to do so.
 

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