#animation101

We’ve got a lot to cover this semester 📝

Animation 101 is now streaming on our channel! 

👉 https://at.nick.com/Animation101 👈

A to B

A to B: Easing

A to B: Anticipation

Pendulums

Block Interaction

This was a big task as we had to do four different ball weights. Before I started these I did a regular looped bounce as a test. This was pretty easy to achieve and i tried both with and without squash and stretch which gave off rather different impressions. Using this as i started working with the four ball types I chose: Balloon, Beach ball, Bowling ball, and Ping pong ball

The balloon i used a similar squash and stretch to the test. This ended up giving the impression that the balloon was a bit deflated but that exaggeration ensured it couldn't be mistaken for the other options on the list. It could possibly have also been slower. I’m not perfectly happy with this one but am satisfied enough as I spent a while on it already.

The bowling ball was easiest as it only had a couple bounces then simply rolled. The first bounce I originally made a bit too high. I decreased it but looking at it now I maybe should’ve decreased it even more. Other than that I am pleased with this one and think it clearly shows which ball it is.

The beach ball was the other one i was displeased with to an extent. It appears to have too much wight, despite slowing each bounce down multiple times. I initially added a very minor squash to this one too but if it was too minor it was unnoticeable and if it was too much it looked unrealistic. Despite the problems, two of the three people I tested these on correctly guessed it was a beach ball (one said basket ball) so not a total failure.

The final bounce I chose was the ping pong ball. Despite being very time consuming due to how it really maintains its energy and keeps bouncing, I am also pretty happy with it. The bounce seems to decrease in height at the right pace and has a good speed (very fast). This one I think definitely shows which bounce it is and obeys physics pretty well.

For this task we had to have two cubes or balls interact. The challenge here was to give the cubes personality/performance without needing to add any excessive detail. The one thing i did add was a cliff but this primarily just played the roll of something for one of the cubes to start on so it wasn’t floating so i think it was okay.

The story I used was a cube aiming to do a trust fall with another cube that reassures it but then moves so cube 1 splats. Cube 2 then proceeds to run away from cube 1 who chases. The story was pretty long and detailed so it took me several hours to complete and had some glitches and crashes.

The bar sheet was useful in working around or working with any issues as i knew briefly how a section was supposed to look if it was wrong somehow:

The end product was shorter than I expected; I found myself shortening a lot of movements like the trust fall itself, cube 2 bouncing and the end chase. I mostly did so because they looked too slow so it looked unnatural and lost the illusion of them being alive or in real physics. The graph editor saved me a lot of time and effort for this (as usual) as i made almost every adjustment using it.

A section of the graph editor:

I would say I’m very pleased with the outcome, although a couple of problems remain that i had trouble fixing without either a glitch occurring or having to redo something else, so due to time i left it as is.