For my first animation I felt quite confident due to having done quite a few bouncing balls in my undergrad degree with various weights and perspectives. Since we were just starting off learning the basic techniques of animation I decided to try and pace myself and also start from scratch instead of attempting weights and perspectives again. The first week was all about just learning the basics of Squash, Stretch, Arcs and overall Timing.
In my undergrad I didn't do a lot of animating as I mainly focused on building a pre-production portfolio to get me into a design career so this was a refreshing welcome to ease me back into animating. The first challenge of the semester was learning Toon Boom, which was something I was not confident in at all and seemed quite daunting. It took a few attempts but I got used to a few of the basic tools available and made my bouncing ball.
Before I even attempted to animate the ball, I set up my floor and drew in the arcs I wanted my ball to follow as a guide then I added in some very rough lines on arcs to give myself a sense of the timing I wanted the ball to have.
From here I broke it down into my keyframes, breakdowns and finally inbetweens.
This was a nice solid attempt at a ball bounce but I still wasn't fully satisfied, I tried adding a bit more squash and stretch to the ball in my next attempt.
For the final coloured render I thought I could push it just a little bit more and add more weight to the fall of the ball. Originally I had been animating on 2's but changed the fall of the ball to 1's to add the illusion of a quicker fall due to weight.
Overall I'm pretty content with the ball. I could've pushed it and did it with a perspective or used some references to explore different ball types and their weights but for the purposes of the exercise and the limited time I had to complete the assignment I just opted for this simple cartoon ball bounce.
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