Bouncing Ball 2: Arcs

Summary:

     It is our second week of animation and we have already finished our second project. It is a bouncing ball animation, but this time, it is bouncing in arcs instead of in place. For this project we really focused on making the ball bounce realistically. It started off high in the air, and as it kept bouncing, we reduced the amount of squash and stretch and the arc sizes. Just like in the first animation, we started off making the main layers, sky, ground, and ball, but this time, we had a layer for the arcs. We copied, pasted, rotated, exaggerated and transformed, until we had made the ball bounce all the way across the screen. At the end we each thought of a creative way for the ball to disappear and prepare the animation to start over. We made the frame animation and added tweens and timing along with a title and end screen to make it more professional.

What I Learned:

     As I said above, in this animation we added tweens and timing. These are features in the frame animation that helped us with the title and end screen. Tweens made the screens fade in and fade back out beautifully. It was a bit hectic because of all the frames it added to create the fade but I eventually figured it out. We used the timing to pause slightly on certain frames and add suspense. This was also a bit tricky because I wanted to make sure that it didn't look like my animation was skipping. To solve this, I made the pause time shorter.

How Did it Go? What I Would Change:

     Using Photoshop to make this animation was easier this time because many of the steps were the same. Even with the parts that were new, I did not struggle. I really enjoyed this project. If I was to do it again, I would make the ball disappear in in different way at the end. (I was thinking something like getting struck by lightning.)

Bouncing Ball Animation

 Summary:    

     Now that we are back from Winter Break, we have started our animation section of the e9 course.  We began to familiarize ourselves with adobe Photoshop while creating an animation of a bouncing ball. On day one we set up the main shapes and colors of our animation, the sky, the ground and the ball itself. On day two we added gradients (shades and tints according to the light) to them so that they would look more realistic. On day three we made multiple copies of the ball and changed the shape so that it would squash and stretch. Finally today, day four, we animated it, making sure that we used ease-in and ease-out. We copied, pasted, deleted, and reversed frames so that it would bounce over and over again.

What I Learned:

     On the first day we started learning right away about squash and stretch and ease-in ease-out rules in animation. Squash and stretch is something you use when trying to show the mass of an object through movement. Imagine a bouncing ball, if it is lighter, it will have more of a stretch and more of a squash when you drop it. If it is heavier, like a bowling ball, it will have very little to no squash and stretch applied to it. Ease-in and ease-out is how speed is applied to an object in animation, getting faster and slower gradually.

How Did it Go? What I Would Change:

     I had a lot of fun making my very first animation, I always wondered what it would be like to animate, and now I get to do it! I struggled a bit while changing the ball's shape so that it would squash and stretch, but I am happy with the end product. If I was to do this project again I would animate the light on the ball so that it would look more realistic. I would also add something in the background like a bird or some clouds, just to make the landscape more diverse and visually appealing.