Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 4

In-betweens

The last step is to do the in-betweens. In-betweens are the drawings/frames between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion.

When doing the in-betweens using traditional animation you need to remember to transform the ball from its round shape to move of an oval shape but using 3D such as Maya it will do the in-betweens for you but you will need to use the graph editor to make sure the ease-in and ease-outs work and that the ball is stretching along the arc and that the transitions work. Your ball bounce with in-betweens should look a bit like my drawing below on the right.

The best way to work out your animation is to PLAN! You will hear this over and over again but planning is very important. It may seem at the time like you know what you want and can skip it but trust me when it comes to it you will end up animating and reanimating until you end up doing the planning any way.

Below is the ball bounce that I made in Flash to show what the final thing should be like. Sorry that its poor quality. Something that happens in the uploading to blogspot I think.

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 3

Squash and Stretch

Now onto something you hear a lot about in animation - Squash and Stretch. You also see it in the real world (a funny picture of this is shown on left). Actually the starting place of learning about it for all animators is with a bouncing ball. A basic explanation of it is that the ball is round at the top of an arc and as it travels it stretches as it speeds up and when it contacts the floor in squashes and as it bounces back up the next arc it stretches again and then back round and the cycle continues until the ball comes to a stop.

To start doing this use Key Poses; for our bounce it is going to be when the ball is a circle and when it squashes on the floor as you can see in my drawing on the left. This is all done to give the ball weight and is very important but you must make sure you keep the same volume area when squashed as it is round.


The speed the ball is going also depends on the amount of squash you have; in other words the faster it's travelling the more squashed and stretched it will be. I made the image on the right to explain this with squash on top and stretch below.

Next up you need to add the stretches which are the main breakdown drawings/poses, in a sense they are really in-between drawings that explain the action the ball is making. In-betweens are the poses that are between the Key Poses. Below is an update of the image I made with the Break Downs added in yellow.

As you can see, the marks we have used so far have all been in the centre of the poses so you can now see how they came in handy ;)

Any way, back to stretch; unlike with squash that mainly shows weight, stretch shows the speed a ball is moving although you do also need to take in its weight.


A great blog that has some posts on Squash and Stretch is HERE. It has some great examples and really explains what it is and its principles so if you want to know more I strongly recommend visiting it.

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 2

Slow-In and Slow-Out

The next principle of animating a bouncing ball is Slow-In and Slow-Out. This is the action the ball takes on the Path of Action. In the case of the ball, the beginning of the arc is called Slow-In and after the ball does its bounce it goes into Slow-Out, this is because it loses some of its momentum so slows as it approaches the top.

A great tip I was recommended to do when planning your Slow-In and Slow-Out is to put marks along the arc so you can easily work out the balls position and timing. For Slow-In you want the marks to be quite close together and gradually have more space in-between and then the opposite of this for your Slow-Out. Here you can see I've added some marks to my drawing to explain this.

REMEMBER - The closer together the marks are the slower it will move!

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 1

Carrying on with arcs I will present to you my research on how to animate a ball, one of the first places to start animating and is made up of arcs! It does also use some of the other principles such as timing, slow-out, slow-in, squash and stretch.

Path of Action

Firstly you need a path of action. This is where the ball will bounce and is just arcs. We will just focus on doing one bounce for now as once you know how to do one you can do more.

If you wanted to do more bounces, the arcs would need to stay in line like the red line shows with the arcs in the bottom drawing on the left.

Nice arc reference

I came across this image last night of an Elephant Seal. It has flung dirt over itself and the photographer has caught the arc of dirt it left in doing so. If you look carefully enough in films, animation and real life you will see examples of the 12 principles everywhere. I've decided that I will start saving any references I find of these that I think are good and will help me in the future. If you are looking to be an animator too then I'd suggest doing the same, reference is always handy and try drawing or animating from them too; practice makes perfect :D

Film Review of How to Train your Dragon in Q&A

At the end of this weeks second Q&A, Said went on to do a film review of 'How to Train your Dragon' but not like a normal review, this was a frame-by-frame look at parts of the movie to show arcs and not using symmetry, anticipation and staging.

Some of the comments Said made: -

• Hiccup would move his eyes and then his head would follow to look at Toothless.


• 'Keep it simple, keep it stupid'. What he means by this is to keep backgrounds unbusy so the characters are the main focus.
  


• Characters move in nice arcs. Whether its their arms, tail or head. A good example of this was near the beginning where Gobber is having a drink and he slams it down and turns. Or how Toothless moves and swishes his tail.
  


• Don't keep things symmetrical unless your looking for seriousness. Like when Toothless is staring at Hiccup in a serious manner to make him eat the fish but when he bites into it, Toothless relaxes and sits back and his pose is not symmetrical at all. Like one ear was higher than the other and even his eyes were different sizes!


• Said also explained how Hiccups father, Stoick is all powerful, big and manly so when he was sat in the dark in his house in front of the fire and Hiccup tries to sneak in he was filling most of the screen (the animator had also nicely posed him in an arc but still not symmetrical). Hiccup is small and weak so when he comes in he is small in the background to represent him. It's easier to explain when you see it, sorry I should of taken more screen shots.

I love How to Train your Dragon and it is one of my favourite movies! If you love it too or even just love dragons or concept art then I recommend this book. The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (How to Train Your Dragon Film)

The 12 Principles of Animation

The best place to find out about them is in the book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnstone but below I have given brief descriptions of what each means.


Squash and Stretch
This action gives the illusion of weight and volume as a character moves. The best example of this is with a ball.

Anticipation
This movement prepares the viewer for major action that the character is about to do. You do it in real life. Think about how you jump. Do you just do it or do you bend your legs and swing your arms back in anticipation for the jump?

Staging
This is where you use props, characters and camera angles to help tell the story, direct the eye and create a feeling for the scene. For example, here Woody and Jessie are either side of Buzz creating a triangle that points down to Buzz as he is the main focus of this scene but the triangle falls towards Woody creating an uncomfortable space to show Woody’s feeling at this moment.
Straight-ahead and Pose-to-Pose animation
Straight ahead is used for actions where spontaneity is important. Pose to Pose animation you plan out your animation using poses. The best way to do this is by drawing thumbnails to work out your scene.

Follow through and overlapping action
When an object or character comes to a stand still you get a follow through and overlapping action. For example if a character stops running their hair will go slightly go further than the character.

Slow-out and Slow-in
This softens the action. Making it more lifelike. A good way of doing this is by making sure no movement is totally linear in the graph editor, that way you will avoid a robotic look.

Arcs
Most actions follow an arc or circular pattern rather than being constrained to one axis. Arcs make actions more natural action and helps disguise inbetweening that 3D software makes.

Secondary Action
This is to add more believability. It basically reinforces the main action. An example of this is when a cat is walking it might be swaying its tail or twitching its ear. If you look at a real cat it won’t just be walking it will be doing other stuff with its body too.

Timing
An important piece as if timing is wrong the whole thing will look wrong. To get better at this, watch reference footage and repeatedly playblast and watch your animation to make sure your getting it right. Also, get views from other people, they may spot a flaw in the timing that you may not.

Exaggeration
One of my favourite as I grew up around cartoons such as Tom & Jerry and the Looney Tunes, where they sometimes really exaggerate their characters actions. Sometimes exaggeration is necessary though but not always and you shouldn’t really over exaggerate as things can get silly… well unless that's what your after ;)

Solid Drawing
Are interesting with well-proportioned shapes and a good sense of weight and volume. Apply these characteristics to 3D models and poses.

Appeal
This is the visual quality that makes a character or object attractive, interesting or inspiring. Don’t just think cute or beautiful though, this can be applied to monsters and villains.

The best website I can recommend for finding out more about the 12 principles is the website for the guys who came up with it! Frank and Ollie so check out this link - www.frankanollie.com/PhysicalAnimation.html