Animation Field Notes

Animation Field Notes

The Driving Force Within

Force is the current that makes drawings breathe

Todd Shaffer's avatar
Todd Shaffer
Oct 07, 2025
∙ Paid
a little girl pushing a wagon with a statue of a man in the background

Force is everything. Not just in physics, but in drawing, animation, storytelling. Force is the current under the surface—the thing that keeps a character alive. It’s what separates the living from the lifeless, the dynamic from the static.

And yet, time and again, animators fall face-first into the static. They render, they move things around—but they d…

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