Timing for Animation, 40th Anniversary Edition, 3rd Edition

Anticipation

One of the tricks which an animator has to learn is how to attract the attention of the audience to the right part of the screen at the right moment. This is of great importance to prevent the audience missing some vital action and so the thread of the story. Although the audience is a group of individuals, the human brain works in a predictable way in these circumstances and it is possible to rely fairly confidently on reflex audience reaction.

If there are a number of static objects on the screen with the attention equally divided between them and suddenly one of the objects moves, all eyes go to the moving object about ⅕ second later. Movement is, in effect, a signal to attract attention (Fig. 29). If, therefore, a preliminary ...