From dylantarre-animation-principles
Use when implementing deformation effects, bounce animations, impact responses, or any motion requiring organic elasticity and weight expression.
npx claudepluginhub joshuarweaver/cascade-content-creation-misc-1 --plugin dylantarre-animation-principlesThis skill uses the workspace's default tool permissions.
Squash and stretch is considered the most important of Disney's 12 principles because it solves animation's fundamental problem: making rigid objects feel alive. Developed in the 1930s at Disney, it emerged from observing how real flesh and rubber deform under force while maintaining constant volume.
Generates design tokens/docs from CSS/Tailwind/styled-components codebases, audits visual consistency across 10 dimensions, detects AI slop in UI.
Records polished WebM UI demo videos of web apps using Playwright with cursor overlay, natural pacing, and three-phase scripting. Activates for demo, walkthrough, screen recording, or tutorial requests.
Delivers idiomatic Kotlin patterns for null safety, immutability, sealed classes, coroutines, Flows, extensions, DSL builders, and Gradle DSL. Use when writing, reviewing, refactoring, or designing Kotlin code.
Squash and stretch is considered the most important of Disney's 12 principles because it solves animation's fundamental problem: making rigid objects feel alive. Developed in the 1930s at Disney, it emerged from observing how real flesh and rubber deform under force while maintaining constant volume.
Volume Preservation: When an object squashes, it must widen. When it stretches, it must narrow. This constraint creates believability—violate it and objects appear to grow or shrink rather than deform.
Force Visualization: Squash and stretch makes invisible forces visible. A ball squashing on impact shows us the floor's resistance. A character stretching mid-leap reveals velocity and momentum.
Not all objects deform equally:
Even "rigid" objects benefit from 1-2% deformation—it prevents the dead, mechanical feel.
Timing amplifies squash/stretch: Fast impacts demand more squash; slow floats need gentle stretch. The deformation amount must match velocity.
Anticipation uses stretch: A character winding up for a jump often stretches slightly before the motion begins.
Follow-through extends it: After landing, the squash ripples through secondary elements (hair, clothing, flesh).
Start with 10% deformation for energetic motions, 2-3% for subtle polish. Adjust based on material and tone. When in doubt, less is more—squash/stretch should be felt, not consciously noticed.