Animation Critique - Bouncing Balls (Alison)

Direct Link: Alison's Balls, light & medium & heavy & character

Light Ball:

Over the 9 to 13 frames or so the ball slows down. The first rolling down is faster, so slow that down so that part falling down is at the same speed. From 10 15 the ball is moving screen left on a very straight path, as if there was still a ground beneath it. Then it starts going down. That arc needs to be smoother (see image below).















The bounce afterwards is good til 37. From 37 to 38 the ball moves only a tiny bit down, then from 38 to 39 a lot more. That end bounce/fall needs to get worked on. The spacing needs to get gradually bigger, don't have it stay even, and at the end there shouldn't be a pop.

Same with the next bounce. It's all good til the end, during which the spacing is very even and seems to get smaller til 54 (again, should be the opposite). Then from 54 to 55 there is a bigger move down, resulting in the same pop as before.

The bounce from 55 on goes too far screen left. You can cut that distance in half and make the bounce a bit faster. That means you'll have to add one more tiny bounce at the end.

Medium Ball:

In this one you are having more problems with spacing unfortunately. You need to take the dry erase marker and at every frame mark a dot in the center of the ball. Do this for the beginning and you'll see that the spacing is very uneven.
























First the ball maintains the same speed, then on frame 4 speeds away, same on 5, then it's small again, moving in a straight line to the left, then suddenly down.

The dry erase marker is not a gimmick. You NEED to use it. If not that, then use the ghosting method in Maya, or whatever is convenient, but you need to use something to track your arcs and make sure that the spacing makes sense.


















The second bounce shows you that you have two big gaps and that throughout the rest of the bounce the spacing is very even.














The third bounce shows a gradually smaller spacing and then a pop at the end.












Here you can see that the arc is not smooth enough and that the spacing at the beginning is too even.











This one is hard to judge because I can't zoom into your file. But I think I made my point pretty clear. You can still see that the arc needs some work and that the last bounce is too wide.



















This is a ball falling onto ice, so don't pay attention to the bounce, but look at the spacing of the initial fall. The spacing gets gradually bigger, there are no pops in it. Same thing with a bouncing ball assignment.

Heavy Ball:

Same problem here:
























The ball is all over the place. It starts off slow, then super fast, then ends up suddenly slow again.

Character Ball:

The spacing and timing in this one is a lot better. What I would take out is the pause (double bounce) that you have at frame 115. You can cut out 116 and 117.

I would work on the other ones first before you finish this one (it's pretty much done anyway).

Cheers
Jean-Denis