Good Ol' Ball Bounce

I wanted to go back and hit on the basics, so I've been doing some simple ball bounces.  I want to work on weight more, as I've been having trouble with animating weight on the heavy Grapple enemies.  Each of these were pretty quick, and as expected, each came quicker than the last.  It's funny because I immediately noticed myself using these principles in a different animation afterwards.

My first four exercises were a stationary and moving bounce, one affected by gravity, and one not.  (Suggested by user Slipsius on Polycount.)  I also threw in some experimentation with different masses, for good measure.  The first four are based off of a basketball.  The next two are bowling balls to get the feeling of a different mass.


Thanks to Saul Garcia for making his ball rig available on Creative Crash.

More Bouncing Ball Animations

Here are my first two animations for FIEA.  It ended up being a bit of a review, so I tried to make it interesting.  The first one was a basic ball bounce.  On the second one, I wanted to play with overlapping action, so I did the quintessential tail ball.




I used a program called Plastic Animation Paper.  It is like a digital animation light table.  You can get it for free from their website.  I used it last year for planning out 3D animations, and I highly recommend it.

Bouncing Ball Animations

The bouncing ball, the quintessential first pencil-test for a beginning animation.  We had strict guidelines for our first bouncing ball, and then were given free reign to try different materials and bouncing surfaces.

 

Regular ball bounce on Ones, Twos, and Threes

Ball bounce off of a wall with contrasting materials

Ball bounce with more organic materials