We started off this week with a presentation on the basics of animation such as timing, spacing, and the twelve principles of animation. We then learnt about one of my favourite techniques in animation, Squash and Stretch. I like this technique as I feel it adds a lot of life and personality to any movement. An animated object would flatten when affected by gravity and elongate when affected by momentum. We were then given a lecture on how to use krita for animation. As there was not enough computers in the room and I had experience animating on krita before I just watched the lecture instead of following along. We were learning how to animate a bouncing ball with the basics of animating. For our homework we had to animate three balls of different weights bouncing. I started off by animating them with an arc and a bit of squash and stretch but found they didn’t really look right timing wise, and the squash and stretched looked quite jarring.
I later decided to animate the balls on the spot instead of on an arc so I could understand weight and timing better. I started off with a light ball bouncing. I feel my timing and weight improved greatly from the last bouncing ball animation. If I were to do this one again I would add some squash and stretch to give the ball more personality but as it was my first time trying the ball on the spot instead of an arc I felt I would leave it out this time but add it to future animations. I imagine the ball as a sort of basketball material as it hits the floor
I then animated a heavy ball bouncing with a lot of stretch on the way down as it would fall with the most momentum and power against the ground. I had the ball jump a lot less on its second bounce as i felt it would have lost a lot of momentum due to its weight. i also had this ball come to a full stop the quickest as it wouldn’t bounce that much.
I then animated a ball with a light weight. I feel my timing and understanding of weight was quite strong on this one as the ball bounces. I added a tiny bit of squash and stretch the first time the ball hits the ground as I felt it would have the most momentum there but stopped after as it wouldn’t go fast enough to distort the ball. I imagine the ball with a ping pong ball sort of material due to the way it bounces.