Animation Principles - Novice

Animation Principles - Novice is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from dylantarre/animation-principles. It costs 24 tokens per session (626 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An introduction to the 12 classic principles of animation, with simple explanations and exercises. It is aimed at people who know a little about animation and want to practise using it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to practise timing, anticipation, squash and stretch, staging, and other basics in small animation projects.
Why use it?
It connects abstract animation rules to concrete examples, so beginners can make movement feel clearer, smoother, and more believable.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to practise timing, anticipation, squash and stretch, staging, and other basics in small animation projects.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dylantarre/animation-principles/novice
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add dylantarre/animation-principles --skill novice
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dylantarre/animation-principles

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

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README.md
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Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 626 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00024 $0.00626
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00313
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00125
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00063

Measured 10d ago against content hash 2443d368a926, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Animation Principles - Novice scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/04-by-skill-level/novice/SKILL.md · 62 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 62 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Building Your Animation Foundation

You know the basics. Now let's understand how to actually use these 12 principles in your work.

1. Squash and Stretch

What it does: Gives weight and flexibility to objects. Try this: Animate a bouncing ball. Squash it 20-30% on impact, stretch it slightly at peak velocity.

2. Anticipation

What it does: Prepares the viewer for action. Try this: Before a character jumps, have them bend their knees. The bigger the anticipation, the bigger the expected action.

3. Staging

What it does: Directs attention clearly. Try this: Use silhouettes to test your poses. If you can't tell what's happening in shadow, restage it.

4. Straight Ahead vs Pose to Pose

What it does: Two animation methods with different results. Try this: Use pose-to-pose for planned actions (walks, dialogue). Use straight ahead for wild, organic motion (fire, water).

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

What it does: Creates natural, fluid movement. Try this: After your character stops, let hair, clothes, and appendages continue moving for a few frames.

6. Slow In and Slow Out

What it does: Adds weight and smoothness. Try this: Add extra frames at the start and end of movements. Fewer frames in the middle means faster motion.

7. Arc

What it does: Makes movement feel natural. Try this: Track your character's hand through a wave. It should draw a smooth curve, not zigzag.

8. Secondary Action

What it does: Adds richness without distraction. Try this: A sad character might wipe their eye while talking. It supports the emotion without stealing focus.

9. Timing

What it does: Controls the mood and physics. Try this: Same action, different frame counts. 4 frames = snappy/light. 12 frames = heavy/deliberate.

10. Exaggeration

What it does: Pushes reality for effect. Try this: Find the real movement, then push it 20% further. Scared? Eyes wider. Angry? Lean more forward.

Read the full file on GitHub · 62 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 62 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 2443d368a926

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Animation Principles - Novice is a skill published in the GitHub repository dylantarre/animation-principles (80 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 626 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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