Week Two - Going Ballistic

Week two was all about animating inanimate objects and learning the basics of timing, movement, and weight in animation. After observing and playing with a variety of balls: bowling ball, ping pong ball, soccer ball, water balloon and beach ball, we were asked to animate one hard and one soft ball, using a standardised ball-size and background. The test would be during the crit at the end of the week. Our balls needed to be recognisable by the rest of the class by bounce alone!

What I deemed as a relatively easy task, was actually much harder and more time-consuming than I first thought. I chose a ping pong and a beach ball, mostly because I thought the beach ball would be difficult one to pick, so would really test out my skills. The ping pong and bowling ball were much of a muchness, so I just picked at random. I commenced the task by watching and recording the arch movement of both balls and listened to the rhythm of the bounce. From here I created the key frames, from which I 'slugged out' the rest, using a traditional X-Sheet. Being hasty, I tried my luck at guessing the timing of the beach ball roll, unfortunately I found out later that I had underestimated the amount of drawings needed, and had to add another 100 drawings or so to get it rolling smoothly. The hard lesson was learnt, so I approached the ping pong ball with much caution.

The line tested animations have been included below. Much to my relief they were both successfully guessed by my fellow classmates. However, looking back at them, if I had the patience to change them, I'd probably extend the first arch of the beach ball and add in a few more bounces for the ping pong ball. To save a few trees, I think this might have to be explored further on Flash!

Take a guess at which one is which!