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.