What you are building
A jump is the best second exercise in animation, after the bouncing ball. It is short enough to finish in one sitting, it uses almost every principle worth knowing, and when it goes wrong it goes wrong in ways you can diagnose precisely. Twelve frames at 12 frames per second gives you a one-second jump — plenty of room for a full crouch, launch, hang, and landing.
You do not need a character. A stick figure, or even a simple rounded shape with two legs, will teach you everything this exercise has to offer. Spending your attention on the drawing is the main way people fail to learn anything from a jump.
The five phases of a jump
Every jump, from a casual hop to an athletic leap, has the same five parts. Knowing them means you can spot immediately which one is missing from a jump that is not working.
| Phase | What happens | What it tells the viewer |
|---|---|---|
| Anticipation | The body crouches: knees bend, torso leans forward, arms swing down and back | A jump is coming, and roughly how big it will be. The deeper the crouch, the higher the expected jump. |
| Launch | Legs extend explosively, body stretches upward, arms swing up | Force. This is the fastest change in the shot and should have the widest spacing. |
| Airborne | The body travels along an arc, tucking slightly and then extending toward the ground | That the character is genuinely subject to gravity and no longer in control. |
| Impact | Contact, then compression: legs fold, body drops below its neutral height | Weight. The amount of compression is how the audience judges how heavy the character is. |
| Settle | The body rises out of the squash, overshoots slightly, and returns to neutral | That the jump is over. Without this, the animation appears to have been switched off. |
A twelve-frame plan
Here is the whole jump laid out. Four of the twelve drawings are extremes, one is a repeat, and the remaining seven are in-betweens.
Notice the balance. The character is only off the ground for four of the twelve frames — a third of the shot — and yet that is the part beginners spend most of their effort on. The anticipation and the settle are what make it read as a jump rather than as a figure being moved upward.
The arc through the air
Once the feet leave the ground the body is a projectile, which means its path is a curve — rising steeply, flattening at the apex, and falling away steeply on the other side. A jump animated along two straight diagonals is one of the most recognisable beginner errors there is.
Track the hips rather than the head or the feet. The hips are closest to the body's centre of mass and so they follow the cleanest arc; the head and feet have their own smaller arcs layered on top. If you are jumping in place the arc is a narrow vertical one, and if the character travels forward it widens into the arch above — but it is always a curve. See arcs for how to plan one on a guide layer.
Spacing: the apex is the slow part
The feeling of hanging in the air is not something you draw — it is something you get for free by spacing the airborne frames correctly. A body decelerates on the way up, is momentarily almost stationary at the top, and accelerates on the way down, so the frames near the apex sit close together and the frames near the ground are far apart.
Get this wrong in either direction and the diagnosis is easy. Evenly spaced airborne frames make the character feel like they are on a lift. Too few frames near the apex and the jump has no hang at all — the character touches the top and falls immediately, which reads as being yanked back down. The underlying idea is covered in timing vs spacing.
Build it step by step
Work in the order below rather than from frame 1 to frame 12. Extremes first, then the supporting drawings, then the timing.
- 1Create a project and add twelve framesUse a small canvas so the whole jump fits on screen without scrolling. Draw a ground line on its own layer so it stays identical in every frame and gives you something to judge height against.
- 2Draw the three extremes firstPut the neutral standing pose on frame 1, the deepest crouch on frame 3, and the apex of the jump on frame 7. These three drawings define the whole action; everything else supports them.
- 3Add the launch and the landingOn frame 5 draw the body fully extended, stretched upward with the legs straight and the arms up. On frame 9 draw the impact: legs bent, body compressed, lower than the neutral pose.
- 4Fill the anticipationOn frame 2 draw the body part-way into the crouch, and hold the crouch on frame 4 by repeating frame 3. The hold is what gives the launch something to release from.
- 5Fill the airborne framesDraw frames 6 and 8 with the body on the arc between launch and apex, and apex and landing. Keep the gaps wide — these are the fastest frames in the shot.
- 6Add the settleOn frame 10 start to rise out of the squash, on frame 11 overshoot slightly above the neutral height, and on frame 12 return to the neutral pose from frame 1.
- 7Play it back and tune the spacingPlay at 12 frames per second. If the jump floats, widen the gaps either side of the apex. If the landing feels soft, delete the drawing immediately before the impact so it arrives with no smoothing.
Keep the ground line on its own layer. It is the only reference you have for how high the character actually goes, and redrawing it twelve times guarantees it will wobble — see working with layers. Onion skinning, toggled with O, is what makes the airborne frames possible to place accurately.
Making it feel heavy or light
The same twelve frames can produce a leaping cat or a jumping anvil. Weight is communicated by how long the body takes to change velocity and how much it deforms, not by how the character is drawn.
| Property | Light character | Heavy character |
|---|---|---|
| Crouch | Shallow and quick — one or two frames | Deep and slow — four or more frames, often with a hold |
| Launch | Instant: one frame from crouch to fully stretched | Gradual: the legs visibly take time to extend |
| Height | High relative to the body | Low — effort does not translate into much air |
| Apex | Long hang, many frames near the top | Short hang; the body starts falling almost immediately |
| Stretch | Noticeable elongation on launch and descent | Little or none — mass resists deformation |
| Impact squash | Small, and it recovers in a frame or two | Large, and it takes several frames to recover |
| Settle | A quick overshoot and done | A slow rise with a visible secondary dip |
The amount of deformation has to agree with the spacing or the two read as contradictory — heavy squash on a frame that barely moved looks like a drawing error. See squash and stretch for how to keep volume consistent while doing this, and exaggeration for how far to push it.
Common mistakes
- No anticipation. A character who leaves the ground from a standing pose has no visible source of force. The crouch is not optional.
- No settle. Landing on the final pose and stopping is the single most common reason a finished jump still looks unfinished. Add the squash, the recovery and the overshoot.
- A straight path through the air. Two diagonals meeting at a point is not an arc. Flatten the top.
- Even spacing in the air. Produces a character riding an invisible lift. Crowd the frames at the apex.
- Smoothing the impact. An in-between between the fall and the squash removes all the force. The contact should arrive with no drawing softening it.
- Landing at neutral height. The impact frame should be lower than the standing pose. Landing straight onto neutral reads as weightless.
- A crouch that disagrees with the height. A deep crouch promises a big jump. If the jump is small, the audience reads it as a mistake.
Where to go next
A jump is built almost entirely out of anticipation and squash and stretch, so those two articles are the natural follow-ups. For the path through the air, read arcs; for the landing, read follow through and overlapping action.
When you want a longer sequence with a repeating structure, the walk cycle is the standard next project. To share what you have made, see exporting your animation.