EX.3 The Bouncing Balls

It sounds silly, but lets face it, its where everyone starts, its where all the good books start, its where every tutorial intro started, this is the first proper step to becoming an animator, what kinda of animator you will be is up to you, however to become a good animator i would imagine you will revisit this exercise many times to perfect your skills.
So as discussed briefly an animator brings an image to life. Keep in mind im working on 2D in this module, 3D is a whole different ball game.

Animators make a simple image come to life, through many inbetweens and keyframes they make it realistic, and how do they make it realistic? well they test it out, and take all elements into account, including the objects materials, characteristics and the environment.
I planned this particular exercise to show my understanding of all these factors and more, its time to wise up with the work, so far i havent really been putting knowledge into practice.

To show different materials i will create two exercises, one showing a rubber bouncy ball and the other a dropped cannon ball.
The bouncy ball i tried a few times and i was unhappy with all of them, they looked so dull, after all everyone does the bouncy ball for animation practice.
Below is how most show a bouncy ball, bouncing along loosing momentum, and slowly stopping, by stretching the ball in some inbetweens you can see how the ball has certain characteristics due to its material.

Planning a path wayfor the ball and speed would be a major part of this exercise. During the planning process i decided to make the path way a bit different i would include other objects and obstructions, in the end i went along with a simple diving board. The balls speed and characteristics were actually determined through testing, i played about with a rubber ball on the edge of the desk for about an hour before i actually understood how i wanted this ball to be  portrayed in the exercise. 

The ball starts off in a simple roll and then like a living thing rolls back and begins to bounce, it bounces three times, higher each time, stretched and squishing more on each landing, gathering momentum for the big hurtle off the diving board, shooting down to the ground and bouncing straight up and flattening itself off the corner of the page which i considered a restraining wall. and then from there it bounces across the page slowly loosing its momentum and rolls to a stop. 

I was hoping it would be a little insight to animating a simple object and giving it life, even a little personalty. 

This was my first time ever animating in traditional style. So it took me a while to understand what i was doing, thus the extensive planning. 

Above are just a few images i hope will give you all a better understanding on what all is required for traditional animating. The essentials are PAPER lots and lots of paper. 

You will be surprised how much paper you are about to use, pencils, of your choice, me and conrad (pictured above, my equally confused classmate posing with all our animation stuff out) decided to be really fancy and use blue animators pencils, but i didnt find much use for them, i found lightly sketching and then drawing over them in a dark pencil suited this particular project. You will need to fashion some sort of animation work area, ive seen some very interesting ones from the rest of the class, talk about make shift. but me and conrad being partners in crime in this case, decided what i was missing he had and visa versa. so i supplied a light box and he supplied the pegs, and the uni thankfully had paper punchers for the pegs. 

To be honest i found you could look at a million animators desks and realize they dont work for you, building your own and finding what you are most comfortable working in is best. 

In the research of this project i found theres actually quiet a big debate which is better flipping or rolling the pages, and in that whole topic no matter the pros and cons its as bad as the top or bottom pegs debate.... each to their own, whatever works for you go with it, ignore everyone else that can work with bottom pegs, if you work better with top pegs, go with the top pegs. 

So at this point you should have your table sorted, supplies at hand (paper/pencils and even more paper) 

I had one sheet always at the bottom, ie. the diving board, it not only gave me the perspective on where the ball was and at what point, it also gave me a template, where to position the page, and before you all start thinking 'how hard could that be' when you are on page 102 of 403 you tend to forget which peg you had pt the previous twenty pages on. especially when to get the best frame by frame glow from the lightbox, i couldnt really go over 5-6 pages. 

I am quite proud of this piece since its my first traditional 2d short, as basic as it is, i wouldnt change a thing, except maybe go over the ball in a black and red felt tip marker. make it stand out when its finally scanned in and put on the movie making software. 

The Cannon ball im equally proud off. Now most did the common, cannon ball fall, slight bouncy maybe a wobble side to side gaining its weight position. but thats it.... it literally couldnt be more than 2 seconds if you tried, otherwise it wouldnt fall fast enough to show its weight. So i went a wee step further and threw in a small hard golf ball and another rubber ball, showing the differences in speed, weight and flexibility, i did this by using the cannon itself as an object of obstruction. 

And this is where i made mistake number one.... well, big mistake number one at least, I figured i only needed the cannon ball as a background image like the diving board, but not when there was other balls in the same image, so i didnt think ahead enough to realize that come time to put it all together i couldnt include the cannon ball on a different layer like the diving board without the golf or rubber ball doubling in the image.

So children attempt not to make that fun mistake, otherwise youll be redoing dozens of pages, again.