The image shows a swinging pendulum. As it swings, it reaches an extreme position and then reverses its motion. In animation, what is this commonly referred to as?
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"Slow in" refers to arriving at a pose slowly (decelerating). "Slow out" refers to leaving a pose slowly (accelerating). This principle adds realism to movement by mimicking real-world physics and inertia.
Watch a swing at a playground, it almost stops at the highest point of each arc before falling back down and speeding through the bottom.
Animators give this exact behaviour a name, "slow in and slow out", where "slow in" describes the object decelerating into an extreme pose and "slow out" describes it accelerating back out of that pose.
The pendulum in the image does exactly this at the top of its swing, so the term the question is asking for is "Slow in Slow out", not a description of its shape change or a vague reference to smoothness.
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Approach Solution -2
A different way to reach the same term is to define what each of the twelve classic animation principles actually covers, and see which single definition matches an object decelerating into a stop and then accelerating away again.
Pendulum principle: there is no such named principle among the standard animation principles, so this option can be set aside immediately.
Slow in Slow out: defined as easing the speed of an object as it approaches or leaves a key pose, which is exactly the behaviour of an object reversing direction at an extreme.
Smooth Motion: not a defined principle on its own, more a general outcome that several principles, including slow in slow out, work together to produce.
Squash and Stretch: defined as changing an object's shape under motion or impact to suggest weight, which has nothing to do with timing or speed changes along a path.
Matching definitions to the pendulum's behaviour leaves only "Slow in Slow out" as the correctly defined principle.
Therefore, the correct answer is Slow in Slow out.
