To try and grasp the principles of animation, I decided to start from the basics try and make a ball bounce.
Note – The videos may need to be re-watched a few times as the internet connection can sometimes create a lag in the video.
I started off by literally just positioning the ball at the highest and lowest points of each of it’s bounces and then gradually decreased the distance between these points to zero to allow the ball to eventually come to a stop. At this point it obviously looks nothing like a bouncing ball because I have yet to adjust the timing, rotation and the squash and stretch.
For this next step, I adjusted the timing so that it stayed in the air for longer at the height of each bounce and did this after studying how a bouncing ball should be animated in Richard William’s animation book. However, it still doesn’t really look like a bouncing ball as I still have yet to add rotation and squash and stretch.
So I added rotation and tweaked the timing some more and I think it looks a lot better as a ball would definitely rotate in real life if it were bouncing forward. The timing was still not perfect in this so I had to adjust it some more to reach the final one. The main problem was that when it slowed to a stop it seemed to stop and then roll again, whereas it should just roll slowly to a stop.
After finalising the timing and playing with the squash and stretch, I decided to make two final ball bounces. One of a hard rigid ball and one of a soft, squidgy, water balloon-like ball.
Please click on ‘vimeo’ to watch these through a bigger window.
Hard ball:
Squidgy ball:
