For the first week of animation principles workshop, we focused on the bouncing ball exercise. I haven’t done this exercise for many years, so it was a lot of fun to try it again and also have a go at different animation mediums once again. I have yet to master TV Paint but I’m sure with practice it will come to me. We got the chance to have a go with lots of different types of balls; beach, bowling, ping pong, tennis etc. To see how they all moved and we dropped them and rolled them around the classroom. I found this to be a very useful exercise as I could create a solid comparison between the bowling ball and a ping pong ball. I will use these examples for my assignment later on I think.
I enjoyed the examples that Christina gave in the presentations on how the bouncing ball is used in animation in a way that doesn’t particularly relate to the ball itself. Successfully showing the weight of an object is something I struggle with in my own work, so I really think learning these basics again will help to do this later on.
I have added in my bouncing ball attempts below. For the first, I just tried the traditional ball with the squash and stretch. For the second, I wanted to try and create the lazy slow arches of the beach ball.
These two were done in procreate on my iPad but I also did some on paper and on a screen tablet in the studio. I am excited to explore this further and see how it help me better my animation skills!