Week 1: Bouncing Ball

During week 1 of Timing for Animation we had to create two separate bouncing ball animations. One was to be a classic bouncing ball and the other a bouncing ball with a differing quality, such as weight or liquidity. 
I started off my animation journey using ToonBoom Harmony. This is a software I had never used before and found it pretty daunting, trying to do the most simplest task seemed very complicated. However I went online and found a tutorial for beginners and got to work learning the interface.
This is a YouTube video by "Onion Skin" and it gives quite a good insight into the basic and more complicated aspects of ToonBoom. The tutorial starts off explaining the tools and the different aspects of the Interface.
This was extremely useful as I was finding it really complicated to complete simple tasks, due to not being able to find the specific tools and elements I needed.
This tutorial goes in depth on how the timeline and drawings within ToonBoom work.  I thought the ability to create a drawing and then be able to use and reference this drawing again at a later date would be really useful, however it was quite hard to get my head around. 
Apart from the basics from this tutorial I have learned that there is four main parts to ToonBoom. These are the drawing, Timing, Layer and Parameters of your work. These are things I am going to have to get used to working with in order to get the best out of ToonBoom.
Next I found a video by the Youtuber "TipTut" which went through the basics of the bouncing ball animation. Tis video really helped me to understand squash and stretch and the impact the ball should have as it hits the ground. He also explains framing quite well in terms of which positions should have more frames and which should have less.
I think it is important and very well laid out in this animation that you can over exaggerate movements in animations, especially squash and stretch. Giving a bigger squash will give more power to your ball and make it a lot more impactful on the animation.
TipTut has made a series of these videos to help with animation basics and the series is definitely something I will be looking at over the coming weeks to help me as I progress.
Attempt 1 and 2
To the right I have included my first two attempts at the bouncing ball. Firstly I started off using the eclipse shape tool to draw the circles I was using as the ball. This was quite easy as it meant I was able to copy and paste the circle over and over again to keep it the same shape throughout when needed.
For my second attempt I tried to draw the ball myself. This was my first time using a cintiq and it was an extremely enjoyable experience. However it didn't make drawing a circle by hand any easier. Overall I think both attempts turned out quite well, with the eclipse tool giving off the more cleaner and polished look.
If I was to attempt these two poses again I think I would add a few extra frames just to make the movement a bit smoother overall.
Attempt 3
For my third attempt at the bouncing ball I decided that I would have it bouncing across the screen. For this version I had to think a lot more about the arcs and the path which the ball would follow.
When it came to the arcs I tried to include more frames at the top as this is when the ball would be at its slowest, and then less frames as it was falling as this would simulate the speed at which the ball would pick up as it fell. I used the eclipse tool throughout as it gave me the best and easiest manipulation of the ball and made squash and stretch really simple. 
If I was to do this again I would definitely clean up the speed at which the ball moves. Currently my attempt has the ball with pretty much the same momentum throughout despite the arcs getting smaller after each bounce. I would want to add even more frames at the later bounce to show that the ball is slowing down and losing its momentum and this is why it is no longer bouncing so high. 
Attempt 4: Bowling Ball

To finish up on our bouncing ball task we had to create a different variation of the bouncing ball. For this I decided that I wanted to create a bowling ball variation.
The bowling ball in some ways was quite tricky but at the same time a bit simpler as it didn't involve as much bouncing overall. However the tricky part was trying to decide upon the arcs for which the ball would move and then where I would want each frame of the ball to be upon the arcs. 
How fast the ball should come to a stop and how high it should bounce was another tricky part. trying to convey that the ball loses bouncing momentum but keeps its speed was difficult and then trying to bring the ball to a halt for the end of the animation was also quite hard to do. ​​​​​​​
I think if I was to take on this task again I would definitely create a longer animation overall so that the ending and slowing down of the ball would be a lot more organic and it could naturally come to a stop. I spent a long time placing and deleting the end frames to try and show the slowing but overall I think it doesn't translate that well. It does slow a bit and comes to a stop reasonably well, however I think i could do it better if I were to attempt it again.
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