Task:
For week 5, we continued to practise body mechanics animations using the ‘child of’ constraint on the ball and hands, motion paths to help visualise the arc of the ball, a damp track for the head and IK-FK switches. For this week’s we were tasked with animating a character that bounces a ball then jumps and shoots the ball into a hoop.
Research:
For this task I looked into real life references on how people bounce and throw a basketball into a hoop and looked back at the previous ball bounce task.
Process:
Building on the skills I have learned throughout the past tasks I started with a blockout of the key poses for the ball bounce ignoring the ball animation until later then, when I was happy with the poses, I moved onto the inbetweens. After getting the animation of the character bouncing the ball I then moved onto the jump and shoot section using the same method as before ensuring to add anticipation and overlap. Next I animated the ball the same way that I did in task one only this time I used ‘child of’ constraint to attach the ball to the hand during the bounce. Using the motion path I plotted the arcs for the ball once it was thrown and bounces off the ground; the graph editor was then used to create the smooth curves of the bounces. Finally I animated the head using the ‘damped track’ so that the character’s focus would shift from the hoop to the ball like in the references I gathered.
Result:
Overall, I’m really proud of how this animation turned out considering its complexity. I think the ball bouncing at the start turned out well as it looks like the ball really has weight and bounciness. I also really like the little jump but I think the legs look a little stiff when he leaves the ground as well as the ball looks like it shoots out of his hand a bit quick when he is shooting but all together I am happy with what I was able to achieve over all these animation tasks.