Animating a 2d and 3d Ball

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My first 2D Ball Animation

After extensively researching the principles of animation it was now my turn to animate, for my first animation I animated a simple 2d ball using CS5. In my first 2D ball animation it was clear I did not use enough in-betweens as my ball bounced to quick lacking timing and motion.  Also I did not plan the positions of the in-betweens, as a result my ball fell at the wrong speed and there was too much squash and stretch.

Refining my 2D Animation

After watching my ball animation back it was clear it needed allot of iteration before it fulfilled the basic fundamental principles of animation. In my first week I researched the 12 principles of animation, finding good and bad examples. But when it came to my first animation even though I knew what the principles were I did not know how to apply them. For this reason I then went and researched animation further, finding the Richard Williams and "The Animators Survival Kit". In the “The Animators Survival Kit" Richard Williams explains exactly how in-betweens work, showing how using numbered grids can structure an animation. 

I decided the only way I could achieve a good timing and motion/squash and stretch is if I planned each frame of my animation using a numbered sequence that showed the position of the ball though the entire animation.

    

Final 2D Ball Animation

For my final 2D ball animation I carefully went back thorough each frame and checked the positioning of the ball in relation to its numbered grid position. When I started the animation my aim was to animate a ball falling in off camera bouncing along and rolling to a stop. I feel my animation achieved its aims and fulfilled several of the main principles of animation such as timing and motion and squash and stretch. However I do feel my animation lacked appeal and due to the poor proportions of the ball, the animation was not as smooth and following as I would have liked.     

My first 3D Ball Animation

Animating a 3D Ball with Maya has been my first experience of using 3D Animation software, because I have not used 3D Animation software before I found Maya very confusing at first. I found that because Maya had quite a lot of controls and options it was easy to get lost or to choose the wrong feature. At first I struggled to get to grips with key framing, I found that there were some movement in-between key frames. I also discovered that certain key framing controls had very sensitive values, for example the squash stretch values were very sensitive and it took allot of trial and error before I was using the wright value and achieving a realistic squash stretch.

 

Final 3D Animation

After allot of trial and error I had familiarised myself with the controls and key framing system used to animate in Maya, I found the keyboard shortcuts especially useful as they allowed me to perform certain actions quicker than if I had to select them  from the control panel . When it came to refining my animation I found it difficult to achieve a smooth bounce, even when using more key frames. To smoothen out the balls bounce I had to go into the hyper graph section of Maya, once there I had to break the tangents and smooth the key frames position on the graph. I feel my 3D ball animation achieved its purpose of familiarising me with the animating process involved when using 3D animating software like Maya.  Below is my final 3D ball animation, I kept the animation simple having the ball just bounce up and down on-loop.