Bouncing Ball Project

The bouncing ball project can be simply put as the first and most basic step in learning animation. It helps to convey fundamental techniques such as spacing- where the more space the ball has the faster it will be and the more space there is the slower the ball will be. It also makes us aware of the techniques squash and stretch, the principle that when the ball (has to be a soft ball) makes contact with a surface it squashes, and when it leaves the ground it stretches and reverts back to its original shape in mid-air (As seen below).

This can then be applied to other objects and characters that are being animated, giving them a life like appearance.

And so I tried this out for myself...

As you can see I thought it went pretty well, in total taking about 30 drawings (frames) to complete. I actually really enjoyed the process, it took me a while to figure out the spacing and getting the pacing right so it could effectively convey the speed and elasticity of the ball. I think overall I have conveyed that this is a bouncy ball pretty well, not bad for a first try eh?

Then I wanted to try out a heaver ball, so I looked at a bowling ball being dropped because I wanted to see how it bounced.

Surprisingly being the heavy ball that it is, bounces a little before stopping and so I wanted to recreate this for myself using the video for reference. And this was my result...

Overall I feel that this looks ok for a first try, but I thought it didn't look heavy or smooth enough. I realised to fix this problem I would need to take out a frame before the first bounce the ball makes and show the balls heavy weight more by slowly making it role further at the end. I also wanted to pen the next one in to make it stand out more.

In the end I am happy with how it has turned out. I think the slow roll at the end really helps to convey the balls heavy weight and I think outlining the ball in black really helps to draw attention to this. Also the frame being taken out before its first bounce has definitely made it much smoother and again I am pleased at this result!

Then I wanted to give my next bouncing ball some personality, and what better way to do it than this...

I thought that a great way to achieve this would be turning the ball into something humorous... like a tiny whale. I really enjoyed creating this little simplified character and animating it, at first the animation seemed a little clunky but once I went through and added more frames to it, it was much smoother.

Then I went on to animate a ball bouncing off surfaces to see how it would react.

This did not take long to animate as I firstly plotted the balls path and then added in the key frames in the places where the ball would bounce and hit of the squares. I did not want to have to keep re-drawing the squares over and over so I drew them on acetate which overall made the whole process easier.