Week 7 was a very educational week as we dove deep into the fundamentals of animation. Our lecturer taught us about the 12 fundamentals of animation which was very interesting, 12 fundamentals I hadn’t understood fully before-hand.

CLASS:

I didn’t manage to collect any screenshots beforehand, but our class exercise this week was to animate a bouncing ball. We were also taught how to use different 2D techniques to add a more realistic effect to the animation. One of my favorite methods was stretching the ball so it gave the illusion of bouncing when it reached the ground. I had a lot of fun using this technique as it was entertaining seeing how much dramatic effect I could add to the ball, while still sticking to the tutorial.

Another technique I liked was animating on 2s rather than every second, a method I’m used to. It was very interesting to see how animating this way saved me a lot of time, getting the class exercise completed much faster than I imagined.

I took a further look at the slides at the end of this week to refresh my mind, and found that I understood it much better compared to the first time the 12 fundamentals were explained to me.

Overall, I find that techniques such as the squash and stretch, rule of thumb and animating on 2, 3 etc seconds helps animators produce a more appealing and satisfying animation, where the process takes them a shorter amount of time.