Mondo Knows Facts
Squash and stretch keeps drawings from looking stiff
A bouncing ball flattens on impact and stretches as it leaves the ground Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston set out twelve principles of animation in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life. Squash and stretch came first: a shape deforms as it absorbs or releases force but keeps its apparent volume. Animators had used the trick since the early 1930s. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Snow White was the first full-length American cel-animated filmDisney's 1937 gamble took three years to makeSteamboat Willie entered the public domain in 2024The 1928 cartoon was Mickey Mouse's first releaseDisney's multiplane camera added depth to cartoonsSeveral layers of artwork moved past the lens at different distancesXerox copying changed the look of Disney animation101 Dalmatians was the first feature to use the process throughoutAn animation camera looks down at a tableCels stack on metal pegs under a lens that can move a hair at a timeMost hand-drawn animation is shot on twosEach drawing is photographed twice, so twelve drawings fill a second
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Tags: animation, technique, disney
Squash and stretch keeps drawings from looking stiff: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A bouncing ball flattens on impact and stretches as it leaves the ground. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.