Ball bounce with a tail part one

Today I continued practicing another few fundamentals of animation which are drag, overlap and follow through.

I kicked start my experiment by watching the Jason Ryan’s overlapping tutorial (I highly recommend to sign up for the newsletter- it’s pure gold!).

While I was watching the tutorial, I was taking notes of some of the important things he mentioned like making sure your follow through is following an arc for example.

My next step was pretty simple; I was asking myself what do I want to show in the shot? What do I want to focus on?Apart from knowing I wanted to practice my spacing a little bit more, I was thinking of what other elements can I add to it.

The first thing that came to mind was having a go at animating a ball bounce with a tail.

This time around, instead of dropping the ball, I wanted the ball to start on the ground, gain momentum and jump high, then come down and do the same action.

Here is a rough sketch I did when planning the ball bounce:

ball_bounce_tail_planning

 

Conclusion (so far):

  • Animating is heaps of fun! :-)
  • Overlaps can be tricky, it’s very easy to lose track on them if you don’t flip your drawing.
  • Drawing the overlaps straight ahead gave me a more fluid motion.
  • I found it easy to work on the ball bounce first, motion chart it, put it together and then think of the overlaps.

That’s pretty much it for now, next I am thinking of incorporating everything I demonstrated/ practiced here with additional jumps and dissipations from left to right.

Stay tuned!

This is the pendulum I worked on yesterday with better timing and spacing.

2 Responses to “Ball bounce with a tail part one”


  1. 1 Aaron

    Hey Avner,

    Looking good. The bouncing ball with tail works… It’s a big improvement over the first bouncing ball. It flows really nicely… One trick you can do is instead of having him touch the ground on f 33 have him go straight to f 34… that’s for more impact… I like the energy from 39-40.

    The pendulum is working, too. Maybe a little more drag of the ball at the very beginning… feels nice, tough.

    Good job,

    Aaron

  2. 2 the J

    You seem a bit too fixated in keeping the tails shape the same you just move it. let the secondary motion twist the tails end in undulating fashion and even to the opposite it was. Then let the tail go even higher straight up for feel of falling. I agree on ditching f 33.

    Again the pendulum exaggerate a bit. Marvel publishing put it very good, it went something like this. If your going to bother drawing it at least make it exciting. Avoid mudane movements make them energetic and dynamic, for every pose.

Leave a Reply






Badge 150x75

Badge 150x28

Badge 150x17

Badge 150x33

Badge 150x32

Where The Heck Are You?



View Avner Engel's profile on LinkedIn

Powered by WebRing.