Fundamentals - Feedback

sachmo

Hi, I am brand new to animation and have begun working through 51 Animation Exercises to learn the fundamentals. I just attempted the 2nd exercise and sense that it is not exactly right and I wasn't positive on where I could turn to for feedback on such an elementary animation. If this is the wrong place for this kind of post, let me know. If it is ok, I would be glad to hear any advice / criticism you have.

FWIW, I'm using Photoshop to create the animations and exporting them as an mp4. After reading the sticky on how to get feedback, I have uploaded the mp4 to syncsketch and posted the link below.



"Bouncing Ball Across Screen"

http://syncsketch.com/playground/d2f74f42e6a54d3e94f49d732879aa50#27337

slipsius

Great start! You've actually done a real nice job on this. Just a few minor things. You could add more squash and stretch, particularly the stretch. You've got stretch on the frames after each bounce, but only for 1 frame, and nothing after or before. Stretch for a few frames going into the bounce and a few frames going out.

Also, it looks like you've added a tiny bit of thrust forward on each bounce. The angle the ball leaves the bounce should be the same angle the ball comes into the bounce. You`re close, but not quite. I drew a dot in the middle of your ball on each frame. If you use the ghosting option (looks like 2 ghosts from pac man) you`ll see it.

Keep up the great work!

PeteHawk

Give it more life! These exercises don't restrict you and they shouldn't.
I gave my students the same few exercises and they just listen but never explore except one or two. People want to see more then the exercise

Yes you have a nice start, but it's very vanilla and standard. Break that, give that ball character. Most importantly explore different things:
-What would happen if I take this keyframe and turned the ball into a box.
-Its a box now!
-How does a box bounce?
-It bounces and spins out of control
-Now what?
-The floor has turned into a trampoline. Argh!?

You get the picture. But good work so far, just add a stretch contact before your current contacts. Gives it a sort of cushion.
And you can add a stretch after the contact too, but if you want that sudden pop in your jump, leave it out.
Finally watch your arcs, with ghosting on you can follow the red dots Stefan has put down, make sure they are symetrical

sachmo

Thanks for the replies guys, I appreciate it.

@slipsius - Your annotations and advice were very helpful. I went back and focused on adding more squash and stretch. Specifically adding two frames of stretch before and after the squish. I probably did not add as much as I should but for some reason when I started on the animation I felt the ball was kind of rigid. A major thing I did not understand that you helped me with is the angle coming into the squish needs to match the exit angle otherwise you get a propelled effect which I had in spades.

@PeteHawk - 100% agree on giving it more life. Thought about how nobody wants to see just a plain ball flailing around but I was failing at just that, so chickened out on spicing it up. Next time! Definitely focused on the arcs this time around and it helped tremendously.

"Bouncing Ball Across Screen After Implementing Advise"

http://syncsketch.com/playground/22122dbf3ea040d8a6718c7c885e9327#27378