Squash and stretch: a hop made with blocks
Squash and stretch is the first of the 12 principles of animation: a body squashes when it hits something and stretches when it moves fast, while keeping about the same amount of stuff. It is what makes a bouncing ball look like rubber and a character look soft and heavy at once. It is also one of the first exercises animators are given.
In this lesson you make a hop with one block in the Forge's move maker, watch it squash and stretch, and make it bigger. It takes about five minutes. A note on what you will see in a cartoon: the move maker shows the squash itself, the whole body shorter and wider. A person built in the Forge, in a cartoon, takes the same squash in the knees instead, as a real body does, so the hop lands with a bend rather than a squish; a rounder character, a ball or a blob, shows it as it is.
1. Open the editor
Go to jabbertoon.com/editor/. This is the one editor: Cartoon, World, Game and Forge are its tabs along the top.
2. Go to the Forge
Press Forge at the top. The Forge is where things are made: characters, things, lands and moves.
3. Start a new move
Press New move. A person stands ready.
4. Make it with blocks
Press Blocks. The middle holds one block: when it starts.
5. The wiggles
On the left of the blocks, press Wiggles. This group holds the moves that bounce and shake the whole body.
6. A hop
Drag the first hop block out and drop it under when it starts, so it clicks into place. It reads hop 60 px high every 0.6 s.
7. Watch the landings
Press Play. The person hops again and again. Watch each landing: the body squashes, shorter and wider, as it meets the ground, and stretches, taller and thinner, as it springs up again.
8. Higher
In the hop block, click 60 and type 120. The hop is twice as high now, and the same squash at the bottom reads as a real thump.
9. Name it
Click the box at the top, The move's name: it says “My move”. Delete those words and type a made-up name, like Big bounce.
10. Keep it
Press Use it. Big bounce is kept in 🎒 My moves, and every character can do it now.
Try it yourself
- Faster. Click the hop block's 0.6 and type 0.3: twice as many hops, each a quick bounce.
- Smaller. Make the height 20: a little skip, with the same squash at the bottom. Compare it with 120 and judge which one the squash suits: a squash is meant to match how hard the body lands.
- Without it. Watch any of the moves on the 12 principles page and look for the squash at every landing: once you see it, a landing without it looks hard, as if the body were made of wood.
Squash and stretch is on the hop block already; in Blender an animator gets it by scaling a bone and keeping its volume with the Stretch To constraint, as the 12 principles page shows.