The potential educational benefits of animation arise from its capacity to portray temporal change directly and explicitly. However, these benefits come with associated costs that can pose considerable challenges to learners. The processing requirements of conventionally designed instructional animations are too often poorly aligned with the characteristics of human perceptual and cognitive capacities. Five animation principles that can help animations fulfil their educational potential are described and exemplified. However, in order to make major improvements in effectiveness, conventional ways of designing animations need to be replaced by fresh approaches that take proper account of learners’ capacities. The Animation Processing Model provides an informed basis for principled animation design and opens up new possibilities by emphasizing internal rather than external representation.